by Alison Pick
But her voice trails off and we decline together in mutual silence.
At six the next morning, I hear the hinges on the hermitage screen door squeak open.
I roll over, squinting in the half-light, and see them. My sister, Emily, who looks so much like me, like my Pick cousins, like Marianne. Lindsay, our cousin on the Martin side, who I grew up with. Emily Denton, a summer friend from North Hatley; and my best friend, Nicola, who knows everything about me there is to know. The ones I’ve chosen. I feel them gather around my bed and start singing, five women’s voices weaving the harmonies of “Down to the River to Pray.” I open my mouth to tell them that the ritual is off, that there won’t be a mikvah. As I’m about to speak, though, I realize I can still go down to the river. That water is nondenominational; that the earth will have me regardless.
It is raining lightly as we leave my hermitage, the sound of the raindrops on the green spring leaves like a thousand little wedding bells ringing. We walk in silence, in single file, my friends in raincoats and umbrellas, and me in my bathrobe and running shoes. The gravel road gives way to forest, to a dirt path knotted with tree roots and a dense tangle of branches overhead. We step, one by one, over a trunk that has fallen across the path, and duck beneath a wall of cobweb, spangled with raindrops like jewels. My sister Emily has gone ahead earlier and scouted out a place, a clearing sheltered by a canopy of leaves, and a small pool in the fast-flowing river where the water is deep. We stand in a circle holding hands. Then they break into a line, my silent witnesses, and I let my robe fall away.
There is a blessing to recite concerning immersion, a blessing I have been working hard to memorize, but the first steps into the freezing water literally take my breath away and I forget the words immediately and completely. My ankles are numb, then my knees, my hips. Before I can change my mind, I draw a deep breath, close my eyes and lie down on my back. The icy river rushes over me, under me, through me, scouring me clean for what’s to come. I break through the surface, gasping.
Back on the riverbank, my sister is holding my robe open; I slide my arms into it. My friends are still keeping the silence. We walk out of the woods, single file again, the raindrops beating harder now on the canopy of leaves overhead. When we get to the gravel road, I take Lindsay’s hand on one side, Emily’s on the other side. We make a chain, the five of us, walking toward the camp in the chilly early morning, singing our song again, which belongs to no one, to anyone: “ ‘Oh, sisters, let’s go down, down to the river to pray.’ ”
The rest of the morning is a blur of hairdressers and nail files and stockings. The rain doesn’t let up and we have to move the ceremony inside. Shayna and I have agreed that she will connect with Genevieve, the Unitarian chaplain who is marrying us, about how to introduce the Song of Songs into the ceremony, but I don’t see either of them to confirm. I’m busy in the back room with eyeliner and curling irons. My mother has backed away from her request to walk me down the aisle, but she is there to help with my makeup, advising on mascara and blush. My heart pounds as Emily helps me into my long dress, clasps the pearls behind my neck. The photographer pokes his head in, snapping for posterity. There are ten minutes left. I can hear the crowd gathering in the living room, the collective voice of everyone who has come to send Degan and me off on our life together. The string quartet pauses. I make out the muffled sound of Genevieve’s announcements: “No photos, please turn off your cell phones.” Her voice falls silent and the music starts again. Time lifts her skirts. I turn and spot Dad, so handsome in his suit and tie. He smiles at me, reassuring, and takes my arm.
The first thing I see when I enter the room is the big wall of windows, and behind it, the deep green forest and the clear, steady-falling spring rain. Degan is standing against the backdrop of the trees; we look at each other, and I know everything is going to be fine.
Genevieve begins: “Splendour is everywhere. Blessing is everywhere. May the one who provides this abundance bless this groom and bride.”
From somewhere in our crowd of friends, a baby cries out.
Degan’s mother comes forward to light a candle in memory of his father, who passed away before I met Degan. My mother’s reading is next. Then it’s Shayna’s turn. She steps forward in heels, adding another two inches to her willowy height, and a gorgeous orange dress. She pauses, looking at the crowd, from face to face, as though sharing the most wonderful secret with each of them. She takes a deep breath and places a hand on her abdomen. When she unleashes her voice, it is like nothing I’ve ever heard.
As the Hebrew words rise in the air above the crowd, I look out at the assembly. The faces are open, taking in the beauty of the music. Only Uncle Paul, seated in a prominent place in the front row, has his head bowed. I remember the words from Gumper’s Report from England: “He knows he is Jewish, of course.”
But it occurs to me that Uncle Paul has probably not heard Hebrew spoken in seventy years.
I can’t tell if the look on his face is shame, or fear, or some more complex medley of emotions. I try to catch his eye, wanting somehow to reassure him, but he keeps his head bowed.
Our vows are from the Book of Ruth. When Ruth’s husband died, she chose to remain with his Jewish family. She said to her mother-in-law, “For where you go, I will go.”
The Book of Ruth is a conversion story. Ruth, a convert, eventually gave birth to King David.
Degan holds my eye as he recites his vows. “ ‘Your home will be my home,’ ” he tells me, “ ‘your people my people. And your God shall be my God.’ ”
As he says this last part, his voice catches. We both know the God to whom he is referring.
When it comes time to sign the registry, I have a stab of deep regret that next to the place for religious denomination, I have written “None.”
Despite the various oppositions to this, we have decided to include the Jewish custom of the groom breaking a glass to conclude the ceremony. The glass is concealed in a cloth bag. Degan raises his foot, stomps—and misses the bag. He stomps again, misses again. When the glass finally shatters, the crowd erupts in cheers. Nobody shouts “Mazel tov!” but everyone claps and hollers. Degan and I kiss. We are married.
In the receiving line, Uncle Paul won’t look at me. I have to step forward dramatically and lean in to give him a kiss. My lips touch his cheek: he is barely there.
It pours rain throughout our wedding lunch. A friend of Degan’s gives a blessing about showers of abundance; Dad speaks beautifully about wishing Degan’s father were with us. Emily talks about the “research” I am doing on our family history, calling it brave. She says she sees our late Granny Pick in me.
Heavy silver cutlery clinks against plates. After chocolate done three ways for dessert, there are photographs in the wet and cold with our families. We include Lucy, the only Pick cousin present, in the Martin portrait. I ask what she thought about the Jewish parts of the ceremony: the Hebrew song, breaking the glass. “It was perfect,” she says, and I can hear that she means it.
“Oh,” she says, “and I had a dream. There was a program, and on it, in big red letters, was a message from Granny: ‘Mrs. Liska Pick very much regrets that she is unable to attend, and wishes Alison and Degan much happiness.’ ”
nineteen
DEGAN AND I DRIVE TO KITCHENER to drop off some of the wedding paraphernalia. Dad comes out to the driveway to meet us. “What a lovely ceremony,” he says, before we can even get out of the car. “Your friend Shayna’s voice is gorgeous!”
“I know. Isn’t it?”
“If I were her age I’d ask her on a date.”
Degan and I exchange glances. What would that mean to Dad, to be young again, and dating a Jewish girl?
I remember our conversation at the photography exhibit: “Did Gumper want you to marry a Jew?”
“Of course not.” It would have ruined all the effort that had been put into hiding.
There’s a dull thud in my head from the previous night’s festivities,
which included dancing, followed by singing around the bonfire until the sun began to rise. Thankfully, we’ve planned the perfect honeymoon: a full week at the cabin with nothing to do but relax. I can’t wait to get there and fall asleep in my new husband’s arms. But Dad says, “Come into the house. Just for a few minutes. My present to you is inside.”
In the living room, I find an old blue trunk in the centre of the rug. The kind of cumbersome, heavy case you’d see in a film about hoboes or orphans. “Do you know what it is?” Dad asks.
“No.”
“It’s the trunk that Granny and Gumper brought with them across the ocean to Canada.”
I pause, and look more closely. Frayed leather handles, stickers plastered to its sides. The initials MB are inscribed in black cursive on the top. “Marianne Bauer?”
Now Dad looks closely. “Oh, you must be right!”
Granny’s mother’s trunk. The trunk of a woman who went to the gas chamber.
Never have I experienced my great-grandmother so tangibly. She is no more than a ghost, but suddenly I can see the items she would have packed inside, the pale cashmere sweaters separated by tissue paper, the elastic and cotton of women’s underthings. Dad has arranged for a glass top to be secured on the trunk so we can use it as a coffee table. It will be there, from now on, in our living room. The metaphor isn’t lost on me: I’m being given her baggage. The grief of it, and also the gift.
Degan and I spend our honeymoon opening the incredible pile of presents we have received. We loll in bed throwing hundred-dollar bills in the air like a couple in a lottery commercial. We tear open boxes containing pots and pans, blankets and pillows. More cookbooks than we’ll ever be able to use. Among them, from Shayna, is The Essential Book of Jewish Festival Cooking. The book is laid out holiday by holiday. Shavuot is up next, and now I’ll know exactly what to cook.
The final gift we open is from Uncle Paul: a beautiful Bohemian crystal punch set. In my mind’s eye I picture the wedding ceremony, Shayna’s Hebrew song and Paul hanging his head. I feel chastened, like a very young child.
The second I am married my motherhood instinct kicks in. It has been simmering, just below the surface, for months, and the wedding is like a starting gun going off. Degan and I spend the first days of our honeymoon in bed. We get up around noon and make a breakfast of pancakes and mimosas. Then we go back to bed.
Later we go out and play tourist in a little tourist town on Georgian Bay. We stop for hot fudge sundaes; the ice cream parlour sells pottery imported from Tunisia. Degan sees a tiny blue and white dish that he likes. “We can use it for haroset at Passover,” he says. Haroset is the goopy substance that represents mortar at the seder.
The drive back takes us along the edge of the Beaver Valley, fields and farmlands sprawled out below us, dappled with long evening light. The fresh breeze blows through us from the car’s open windows. We arrive home and stand in the tall grass at the side of the cabin. The river is fragrant with watercress growing in the muddy reeds. The light deepens; in the far trees the fireflies appear, one by one, like tiny lanterns.
“It’s Friday,” Degan says. “Shabbat.”
“Oh? Are you sure?” I’ve lost track of the days.
He takes me by the hand and leads me inside. The cabin is cool and dark. He lifts a bottle of wine off the shelf, then wrestles with the cork until it makes a resounding pop. We don’t have challah, so I set out two pieces of pie, instead. I light the candles and we both cover our eyes. We’ve worked for several days at memorizing the Shabbat blessings, and it is a relief to be able, finally, to recite them by heart. Even if Degan never converts, even if I never do, we have turned a corner where ritual is concerned. I gather the light three times around my head. The wedding has given me courage. I can do what I want. I won’t be stopped.
We take our plates out to the porch, the late-May dusk seeping in through the screens, the sound of crickets in the tall grass. We eat our meal. After, Degan retires to the couch, where he reclines like a prince and reads.
“I’m bagged,” I say. “Off to bed.”
He says, in his pouty baby voice, “Can you do something for me first?”
“Of course.” I think he’s going to ask me to get him another piece of pie.
“Can you bring me my haroset dish so I can see if it matches with our Shabbat candlesticks?”
twenty
THE NEXT TIME WE GO to meet with Rabbi Klein, Degan wants to stop and look at the Judaica at the synagogue gift store to see if any of it matches his new dish. I finally have to take him by the arm and pull him to the rabbi’s office.
“Mazel tov!” she says when she sees us. “Can you just wait a minute while I go to the bathroom?”
The life of a rabbi: back-to-back meetings.
“How was the wedding?” she asks when she is again settled in her chair.
“Wonderful,” we both say at once.
I tell her how perfect the book of Ruth vows were, and how having Shayna sing in Hebrew felt like a kind of coming out.
“Shayna told me it was a beautiful ceremony.”
Aha. So they’ve talked. There’s a long silence in the room. Outside, we hear cars, horns, the steady beat of a jackhammer.
Rachel peers at me. “You seem so serious,” she says. “What are you thinking?”
I’m thinking of my impromptu self-made mikvah; I’m feeling for the second time the freezing cold grip of the river as I lay on my back to let the water wash over me. How I gasped for breath as I broke through the surface, washed clean. “About conversion,” I say. “How right it feels.”
“That’s wonderful,” she says brightly. “I’m so glad.” She looks to Degan. “And what about you?”
I can see he’s biting his tongue. “I’d rather talk about what we need to do for Alie to move forward,” he says.
Her face darkens—almost imperceptibly, but her frustration is clear. “We’re going to have to discuss your decision, too,” she says to Degan.
At her window, the tree so recently bare has grown a coat of bright leafy green. She focuses on him. “Are you hoping to have kids?”
Degan and I turn to each other, almost shyly, and nod.
“Then let me offer this,” she says. “It might not be clear to you now. But with a baby, it is much easier if everyone is on the same page.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, for example, when a new baby is born, and the parents are both in synagogue for the baby naming, but the father isn’t Jewish? I can see in his body language that he feels like an outsider.”
The rabbi twists her hair elastic around the bottom of her braid. “Conversely,” she says, “when the whole family is up on the bimah together, united in celebration …”
I well up, blinking to clear my eyes.
“Why are you sad?” Rachel asks, her voice rigid.
“Because I believe you,” I say. “I know that you’re right. But if it isn’t what Degan wants, I don’t want to force him.”
Degan breathes beside me.
“Can I ask you both something?” the rabbi says. “Where do you feel joy in Judaism?” I open my mouth to answer, but she says, “Because our meetings here are often fairly heavy.”
Degan reaches for my hand, squeezes it. I pause, choosing my words. “You’re right. Because the Holocaust is my access point, it’s taking a while for me to learn the joy.” I blink rapidly. “And in some ways I don’t feel very welcome.”
The rabbi is silent.
Degan’s instinct to smooth everything over kicks in. “We’re thinking of going to Auschwitz,” he says, changing the subject. “When we’re in Europe in the summer.”
“I’ve never been,” Rachel says.
“To Europe?”
“To Auschwitz.”
“Really?” Degan says, genuinely surprised.
“I don’t know what could make me go there.”
I get it. I know what she means. There’s an appeal in that refusal, which is the
same way Granny coped. Yet I have no choice but to try to face that darkness. It’s my only hope of letting the light shine through.
My therapist Charlotte agrees with Rachel that Degan and I should make the same decision. But she takes the opposite tack about what the decision should be. “Why do you need to actually convert? Why can’t you embrace the multiplicity of your background? Nobody can stop you from enacting Judaism in your own home.”
“It just makes me angry. They’re refusing me. It’s so ironic.”
“Does that remind you of anything?”
Not this again.
“Of my father? Is that what you mean?”
She nods. “The desire for acceptance, to be seen.”
But I disagree. “I don’t think you understand,” I say. “I just feel such urgency. To figure this out.”
“And the urgency,” she says, “is our clue that something is amiss.”
I look at Charlotte, silent in her chair. She has dyed her hair from wheat blond to something slightly paler. It softens her expression, makes her face seem more relaxed.
“Oh,” I say. “You mean the urgency indicates a projection?”
She holds her lower lip briefly between her teeth.
“What about your mother?” she asks. “Where does she come into all this?”
And I retort, without pausing, “What about her?”
I feel frustrated and unheard. “I’m just not as compelled by that side of the family. No, ‘compelled’ is the wrong word. I just relate to them differently.”
Haven’t I already told her this?
She looks at me again. Outside her office, someone leans on a horn. “You know,” says Charlotte, “it’s possible I might be wrong here.”
My ears perk up.
“It’s possible I may be biased.”
She is deciding whether to say more. I use her own technique against her and remain attentively silent. It works, and she confesses, “My husband is Jewish.”
