The Family Markowitz

by Allegra Goodman

  “ ’Fraid so,” Ed says with grim satisfaction.

  “But it’s so—badly written!”

  “Not to mention the point of view.”

  “The point of view, of course. And the way it’s expressed. ‘A Palestinian state will be a launching pad and a suicide.’ This is really—just too much. You know, it’s almost anti-Semitic to print something like this unedited. No, really, Edward. This is an attempt to publicize the Jewish redneck element in the national press.”

  “But apparently these rednecks exist.”

  “Not—”

  “Not anybody you know? The man is coming down here to become part of our family. And what can you possibly do about it?” Ed demands.

  Henry spreads his hands. “What can anyone do? I suppose you’ll have to be civil. Where do people learn English like that?”

  “Of course I’ll be civil.” Ed folds the newspaper into quarters. “In fact, I am only mentioning this to you now so we don’t have to go through this, you know—”

  “Later,” Henry says.

  “Right. This is going to be Miriam’s day, for God’s sake, not Zaev Schwartz’s.”

  —

  Sarah opens the door to Miriam’s room that evening to tell her to get ready for dinner. Miriam is asleep on the bed. Wedding presents cover the floor and the desk; foam peanuts squeak under Sarah’s shoes. There is a KitchenAid mixer trailing ribbons, a cut-crystal bowl, a sterling candy dish that looks like a large tomato. Then, on the desk, the boxes from the shower, nightgowns, and salad bowls. And glimmering from its open box in the shadowy light, Henry’s shower gift, an enormous topaz ring, perhaps an inch in diameter, smoky gold, almost gauche like a stage ring, almost medieval.

  “Miriam, you’d better get dressed. They’ll be here in fifteen minutes,” Sarah says.

  Miriam groans. “I’m so tired.” She has taken off the past month from her clinical rotations. It’s been weeks since she’s stayed up all night every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, held cameras for the microsurgeries, checked on the demented patients who throw their feces at the nurses. But she seems to be suffering retroactive sleep deprivation nonetheless. “Where is everybody?” Miriam asks.

  “Your sister is setting the table.”

  “She’s here already?”

  “Yes, she’s here. Your brothers are out getting Grandma.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “So get dressed,” Sarah says. “And put on something presentable.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Like a dress.”

  “They’re all wrinkled.”

  “Well, you should have thought of that before.” Sarah is losing patience. “You’d better iron something.”

  “Mommy?” the plaintive voice again.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I feel kind of—small.”

  “Well,” Sarah pauses at the door, her mind full of cooking times and the fact that there is a crack in the top of the jellyroll. She hears a sort of snuffle from Miriam. Something between sniffling and sighing.

  “I just feel like everyone’s ordering everyone else around and, and being really clinical about everything.” This is Miriam’s nightmare, to find that the ugly light and brisk indignities of the hospital follow you into real life as well. Some medical students find symptoms of every disease they study in themselves, but Miriam sees hospital sterility everywhere she looks, a lack of feeling. She has become more religious in the past two years. What else could she be in those white corridors?

  “Miriam, I’m not being clinical. I’m trying to make dinner,” Sarah says. “Wear the pink dress. The fuchsia one.”

  The Markowitzes array themselves in the living room, waiting for the Schwartzes. Rose sits in a straight-backed chair; Miriam’s brothers sit politely with their feet on the floor but seem too big for the furniture. Susan is upstairs with Sarah, who is ironing Miriam’s fuchsia dress, and Ed and Henry pace around together talking about Oxford, almost as if they thought they were being filmed. When the doorbell finally rings and everyone comes in, Miriam is still upstairs, running through the Friday-night service by herself in the dark. Ed holds the door open for Zaev Schwartz.

  Zaev is a small, somewhat jowly-looking man with dark shadows under his eyes. He seems to be in an expansive mood now, as he gives Ed a white Xerox copy of a newspaper clipping. “Ed, I don’t know if you saw my editorial.”

  “Mm, mm hmm.” Ed places the page with saintly delicacy on the coffee table. Zaev looks disappointed.

  In the meantime, the groom’s grandmother Ilse Schwartz asks, before she and Rose are even introduced, “Zaev, where is the bride?” Ilse is older and smaller than Rose. She lived in Germany and Israel before following her son to the United States, and her accent is German, with Israeli overtones. Rose looks at Ilse’s small, quick eyes and high cheekbones and thinks that she is an imperious woman. Ilse is just a few years Rose’s senior. It is Rose who is the grandmother of the bride. Shouldn’t she be treated with a little courtesy?

  They all sit in the living room before dinner and try to make conversation. “Ed,” Zaev says. He has a deep voice, and his accent is the inverse of his mother’s, Israeli with German undertones. He is an engineer, which may or may not account for the fact that as he speaks he seems to be giving instructions. “I have never seen heat like you have here in this city. I said to Marjorie, I cannot imagine living with this every summer. I see you have air-conditioning,” Zaev continues. “We are talking about putting it in this summer.”

  “We have the window units,” Zaev’s wife, Marjorie, explains. She is a moon-faced woman, who seems to Sarah almost aggressively gentle and unassuming.

  “But we are thinking about installing central air. Do you know something about this?” Zaev asks Ed.

  “No,” Ed says.

  “Putting central air into a house like ours, built when ours was built, is a major project. A major job. The house has to be raised from its foundation to install the vents.”

  Henry interjects, “But there are those garden units, are there not?”

  “The Japanese ones. That is another option. But you know what the problem is with those? There is just one circuit running the whole system. If anything happens to that circuit, okay?, the whole system goes down. And then you’ve got a major problem.”

  —

  Miriam comes down, and Ilse goes to her immediately, gives her a kiss, and ushers her to a seat next to her. “Miriam,” she says confidingly in her heavy German accent. “Why have I not heard from you?”

  “Heard what?” Miriam asks.

  “I have heard nothing from you since you announced your engagement! I’ve had no letters.”

  “Oh. I guess I’ve been so busy I didn’t have time,” Miriam says.

  Ilse shakes her head. “Miriam, do you know that when you marry, you are not just marrying a young man, you are marrying a family.”

  “It will be interesting to see,” Zaev tells Ed and Sarah, “how Miriam and Jon are going to manage when they are homeowners. Jon has never shown any interest in learning about buildings.”

  “Are you planning to buy them a house?” Susan asks with her very polite, very dry English accent. Sarah cheers her silently.

  “No, no, no. I wish I could.” Zaev is completely unscathed. “But those guys—” He shakes his head in the direction of the kids.

  “Oh, the kids work hard,” Sarah says.

  “They think they are working hard. Jon doesn’t know the meaning of the word work. He has no idea. Do you know what Palestine was when I grew up? It was dust. I had my own business, okay?, raising chickens at thirteen. I was doing yard work after school every day—Jon has only had chores in the house to do; he has always had clothes, books, whatever he wanted. This is all he knows. If anything ever happens in this country, is he going to survive? I hope so. But I don’t think so. People laugh when I say this, but my mother”—he nods in Ilse’s direction—“she came from a very wealthy family, an
d they lost everything. They were completely unprepared—”

  “But she survived,” Sarah says.

  “Our grandfather Ludwig had seven children,” Ilse is explaining to Miriam. “My father was Walter. There were five children, four daughters, Grete, Annette, Otalie, and I, and one son, Frederick. For my parents, he, Frederick, was the only one. My brother was a great mind, he followed the family footprints. You see, he was a biologist like our grandfather and our father, and our two uncles. You have heard of the Krebs cycle?”

  “You were related to Krebs?” Miriam asks.

  “My uncle knew him. He prepared work on the Krebs cycle before Hans Krebs came to England. He was a great man.”

  “No kidding,” Miriam says, thinking Ilse is still talking about Krebs.

  “And my brother inherited his mind.”

  Rose is sitting in disbelief. This woman is reciting her entire genealogy without acknowledging anyone else in the room! And it seems an intrusion to Rose to hear Ilse carry on about her family: her brother, their house in Breslau, Ilse’s three sisters, “one to England, one to New York, I to Palestine escaping, and one perishing in Dachau.” The story is not so different from that of Rose’s family, and that makes Rose feel odd. She can’t help feeling that this is her tale to tell, or that at least she should be telling hers first. She has come to believe in the singularity of her own experience as a refugee in England during World War I, and an immigrant in America. In her mind’s eye, with her background as a reader of historical romances, she can’t help believing that if there is a greater trend or larger story to be told, then it would have to be her story writ large. It isn’t polite the way Ilse is talking; it’s nearly plagiarism. “Sarah,” Rose says.

  “Yes, Rose. You know, I think we should all come to the table. Kids, would you help me carry out the food?”

  Rose follows Sarah into the kitchen. Sarah is directing her sons, both taller than she is—“Carry that out first. Both hands”—and she is trying to cut the meat with her electric knife while fending off Miriam with her pained disapproval at the use of electricity on the Sabbath.

  Rose takes her pocketbook, climbs the stairs, and hunts around in the small powder-blue bathroom for some hand lotion. She takes the orange bottle of pills out of her purse, swallows one pill, and sits down at the edge of the bed in Sarah and Ed’s room. She feels a little dizzy. Below she hears the whir of the electric knife, the family moving into the dining room. Something in all this brings back a memory, real or imagined. She is a small foster child in England, lying in bed listening to the clink of a dinner party below. She has been feeling rather neglected lately, during the preparations for this wedding, but she has not said anything. She is also weaker. She is sure of it. The stairs in this house seem taller and harder to climb. The bookcases higher. Perhaps she will sit on this bed all evening and no one will think of looking for her. She will disappear like Alice down the rabbit hole. She will find a small medicine bottle with a label on it: “Drink this.”

  Miriam comes in. “Grandma, it’s time for dinner. Are you okay?”

  “I feel weak,” Rose says.

  Miriam looks at her concerned. Rose remembers with a rush of pleasure that Miriam will be a doctor. “What kind of doctor are you going to be, dear?” she asks as Miriam helps her down the stairs.

  “I don’t know,” Miriam says.

  “I think a psychiatrist might be a good profession,” Rose tells her. “Is it a psychiatrist or a psychologist? I can never remember. What’s the difference between them?”

  “Psychiatrists can write prescriptions and psychologists can’t.”

  “Psychiatrist. That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

  —

  “So you read my article?” Zaev asks Ed at the table. He is too proud of it to let it sit there on the coffee table in the other room without comment.

  “You mean your letter to the editor,” Ed says. He looks at Zaev and tells himself again that now is the time to act with restraint. It’s going to be Miriam’s day.

  “So what did you think?” Zaev asks.

  “I thought it was completely off the mark,” Ed tells his future co-grandparent. “To be perfectly frank, it was a complete misreading of the political situation—a very promising, hopeful situation.”

  Zaev stares at Ed. Then he smiles slightly. “A misreading? No, this is not a misreading. I have some experience—”

  “So do I,” Ed says.

  “You are an academic.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Yes, that’s my point,” Zaev says. “With all due respect, you have readings and misreadings, but let me tell you, I have some experience with this area—”

  In this area, Ed thinks.

  “Listen,” Zaev begins.

  Ed’s inner voice replies, Don’t take that patronizing tone with me. Don’t start making your global pronouncements about life, the work ethic, and the peace talks to me.

  Zaev says, “You have to live in Eretz Yisrael—on the land—”

  I know what Eretz Yisrael means, Ed thinks. You think I don’t know a word of Hebrew.

  “You have to walk through the hills and valleys. Then you see how small it is and you have a better idea what this land-for-peace means. The country is a splinter, a—what do you call it?”—he turns to his wife.

  “A sliver,” Marjorie says.

  “Really, sliver? Okay, a sliver between the deserts and the enemies. The American government has never been interested in the borders, only in keeping it quiet. This is what I mean when I talk about Kevorkian. This is why I always say that Americans are more interested in painting over the problem than getting to the bottom and solving it. They don’t like to get to the root of the matter. This is how they want to get the job done. Do you know, when I wanted to repaint windowsills, three painters told me it would be easier to paint over than strip down to the wood? I spoke to Marjorie’s sister. She said, Look, just get someone to schmear it for you; it will look fine. I said, Not a chance. Not a chance. That’s not how I do things. This is what I’m talking about when I referred to foreign policy.”

  “Spare us the metaphors,” Ed whispers under his breath.

  “What was that?” Zaev asks.

  “Nothing,” Ed says.

  “Sarah,” Marjorie says, “this roast is delicious.”

  “Thank you,” Sarah tells her. “Would you like some more?”

  “I don’t think I could eat any more,” Marjorie confesses. She smiles and says, “It’s exciting, isn’t it? I was talking to a friend of mine in New York whose son got married last summer, and she said something interesting to me. She realized when Ethan got married that it wasn’t just a milestone for him—it was a big milestone for her as well!”

  “Yes, I think that’s true,” Sarah says. “How about dessert?”

  “Can I help you clear?” Marjorie asks.

  “No, thanks, stay where you are.”

  “But I’d like to help.” Marjorie rises in her seat and is surprised to find that Sarah puts her hand on her shoulder to keep her there.

  “Ed, I need you for the tea,” Sarah says.

  When he gets into the kitchen and the door swings behind him, Sarah folds her arms across her chest and glares at him.

  “What?” he asks, whispering urgently. “I have been perfectly restrained.”

  “Go,” she says.

  “That’s it. You brought me in here just so you could glare?” He whispers in her ear. “Can I help it if the man is a silly, self-righteous ass?”

  “Shah!”

  —

  The dinner is over. Sarah lies on the couch exhausted. Her muscles ache.

  “Well, I think that went quite well,” Susan says.

  “Except for the political interlude,” Henry adds.

  “Daddy, why did you have to be so grouchy?” Miriam accuses Ed.

  “I was grouchy?” Ed tries to be good-humored. “I beg your pedeshka. Your father-in-law—fine, future father-in-law—
was the grouchy one.”

  “You don’t have to have a scene with him every time you see him.”

  “I didn’t have a scene with him.”

  “Just because you don’t like him,” Miriam starts.

  “It is completely irrelevant whether I like him or not,” Ed says. “But I wish you would stop criticizing me.”

  “I am not criticizing you!” Miriam is getting weepy again. “You’ve been acting completely weird ever since I got home.” She pauses and then says with sudden insight, “And this isn’t even about Jon’s father. It’s about me getting married!”

  “My getting married,” Ed roars.

  “That’s what I just said.”

  “You know, Miriam, I’ve said in the past, someday you and I are going to sit down and get this straightened out, and I think today is the day we are going to do it! How old are you, twenty-four? You’re going to be married in what, two days? Come over here and I’ll tell you about gerunds.”

  “He doesn’t listen to me,” Miriam says to her mother. “Didn’t he hear what I just said?”

  “I have news for you,” Sarah tells Miriam. “This is not about your getting married. It really is about Jon’s father.”

  Rose decides to give Ed and Sarah a piece of advice. “I’ve always followed one rule,” she tells them from her chair in the corner. “I’ve never said anything about my in-laws, and I think this is the best thing to do, to avoid trouble in the family. No matter what you think, you should keep it to yourself.”

  “Come over here, sweetie.” Ed puts his arm around Miriam on the couch. “Gerunds are very simple.” Miriam closes her eyes and puts her head on his shoulder. She is exhausted. She is not listening. As far as she can tell, he is saying: When you’re in reverse, use your common sense and turn the wheel in the direction you want the car to go! “You see? It’s dead simple,” Ed says.

  Welcome to our wedding, and thank you for sharing our simcha, joy! Our wedding begins with a kabbalat panim, literally meeting of faces. Miriam and Jon will hold separate courts, where you can greet them. Miriam will be in the social hall, and Jon will hold his groom’s tisch, or special groom’s party, in the lounge. There he will give a brief d’var Torah, say a few words of Torah learning.