by Marge Piercy
I waited until Sunday night. I told Crystal that after the regular selectmen’s meeting there would be an executive session with the town counsel. I said I wanted to go out for a drink with him afterwards, to pick his brain. I’d sleep at my place Monday because it was going to be a late night.
“And Tuesday?” she said, as if she’d caught me holding something back. “Were you planning on staying away from us Tuesday too? Because I know what Tuesday is.”
“Tuesday?”
“I’m not stupid, David. I have a calendar. Tuesday is Rosh Hashanah, isn’t it?”
Her calendar was a free gift from the hardware store. It listed the Jewish holidays, but not that they began at sunset the night before. “If that’s what the calendar says.”
“I’m making a holiday dinner. Don’t look so glum.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because we both remember Shabbat. But I’ve got a cookbook now and I’ll do it right.” She pulled out an old yellowing paperback, The Art of Jewish Cooking by Jennie Grossinger.
“Where’d you get that?”
“I found it at the thrift store. And you’d better be here. Tomorrow I’m seeing Mom and I’m going to invite her.”
“Crystal, it’s a weekday night. We have to get up so early. Let’s put it off till the weekend. Maybe Friday? Mom won’t mind. I’d enjoy it more.”
She just smiled. “Just leave it up to me. I won’t fuck up.”
JUDITH
Judith had her lists. She had lists of foods to be purchased, food to be cooked ahead of time on Sunday. Food to be cooked on Monday. Lists of where each of the thirty guests would be lodged, for almost everyone at the dinner must sleep on the island. The September new moon brought very high tides, and the bridge would be underwater by the time the meal started. Most of Gordon’s children had their own accustomed places in the compound, but Sarah had stopped visiting when her father married Judith. In fact, Sarah’s old shack had been renovated into Judith’s home office, so in recompense, Judith put Sarah and her daughter in her own bedroom in the big house. She would sleep in her office.
She had lists of what her lieutenants were each to do: Natasha, her right arm, her comfort and joy; Jana Baer, who would come back for the dinner. The Baers, like the Squeers, had lived on the island for generations. Mattie, her secretary, would be helping all day Monday but would leave before the tide rose.
Sunday had been a reasonably paced day. People were arriving and must be greeted and escorted to their housing, unless it was where they always stayed. A couple of tents were set up as a boys and a girls dormitory, one on the beach and one on the dune. Judith had the keys to the Bechaud house, where she could put two whole families of Gordon’s friends. Then Judith discovered a storm was predicted for tomorrow. She cursed.
Monday began at dawn. Judith went flat out all day. Aside from eating her brief meals in his room, she scarcely saw Gordon. The nurse, Mrs. Stranahan, was with him, as was his oldest son, Ben. Others dropped by until sent on their way by Mrs. Stranahan, protective of Gordon’s waning energy. This crowd was what he had wanted: she was providing him with a last gathering of those he cared for. She set Ben and Larry to taking down the tents before the wind did it for them; she figured she would put the kids in sleeping bags on the living room floor once the tables were removed. Ben was forty-nine, taller than his father and much broader. He was an academic, a family man, a little stolid, almost professionally dependable and easy to like. She hated pairing him off for chores with Larry, who at thirty-two was still boyish and liable to sulk.
In the afternoon they cleared the furniture from the living room (except for the baby grand they could only push aside) and set up a square of tables. Most were from the various structures in the compound, but she had also borrowed a big table from the Bechaud house and a card table from Stumpy. They were all covered in tablecloths of various colors. Sarah had gotten involved in creating pleasing color contrasts and choosing the napkins; she regarded herself as artistic. Every dish in the cupboards went out, plates dating all the way back to the first Mrs. Stone and each wife since. The Bechaud house was raided for cutlery. Mattie lent her more glasses. There was a kids’ table for the five- to eleven-year-olds and an adolescents’ table. By three-thirty it was all set up.
Larry was trying to be sardonic. “It’s the funeral feast before the fact,” he said in her ear. “So macabre. Like a Buñuel flick.”
“This is the time of year to reconsider your faults and failures with other people, Larry. Don’t you have something to reconsider?” She bared her teeth at him. But nothing could really touch her. She was efficient, she was busy, she was numb. She must hold it all together. There was no time for pain and the anticipation of worse pain. “Your mother and her husband should be here any moment. Why don’t you go wait for them?” The sky was gray and low but the storm had not yet hit. The wind was curiously soft and vague, the bay almost glassy, the air heavy as a damp plush curtain.
At four she sent Natasha with two of the more reliable kids to round up all the animals. At 4:45 the dogs were fed and penned up for the evening. At five all the cats were overfed and then distributed where they would be safe and out of the way, all except Portnoy, the big gray who had spent the last six years never more than two feet from Gordon. She left Portnoy on Gordon’s bed. She brought lo, Pretty Boy Floyd and Principessa to her shack. They could amuse themselves throwing her briefs around. They all got along and could sleep with her tonight. The two recovering birds in their cages Natasha moved into the garage. The wind had risen sharply. Now the surf was pounding the beach. When she climbed the dune for a moment’s respite from the kitchen, the wind had whipped the surf into a lather the color and consistency of steamed milk. She could see the rain coming across the bay toward them. As she walked back into the house, the first drops stung her neck and back. The day was still sickly warm, but the wind felt chilly. Two of Ben’s sons and Mark’s stepson were shooting baskets in the rain. Sarah’s seven-year-old daughter and Ben’s youngest were playing fish on the porch, but the wind was beginning to tear the cards away. As she passed, Sarah and Mark were arguing in the living room. They could not keep away from each other. Nothing had healed in six years of divorce.
First course, gefilte fish. That she had bought along with white and red horseradish. She did not relish making gefilte fish, although Yirina had done so every year. Judith hated the smell and the mess. Then came chopped chicken livers and newly baked round challah. Three enormous bowls of salad. Apples, being sliced by Jana and Mattie. She checked the clock. Mattie had to leave now. She kissed her and took over. Lemon juice to preserve color.
Sarah, curiously subdued, was ladling honey from a huge jar into little bowls for each section of table. Judith had only met Sarah once, when they had flown out to Phoenix—where Gordon was speaking—and visited her for an evening. Since then she had gotten divorced. Sarah had been distinctly unfriendly then and on the phone since, but not this time. She was blond and sharp-featured like her mother, Bev Caldwell, who had just arrived with her Texan husband, Buck. They had made reservations in Provincetown and announced they would leave when the tide went down, no matter what the time. Judith shrugged. Two less to bed down. She could move the teenage girls into that room.
It was the final assault on dinner for thirty-two. A turkey was in the oven at the Bechauds’ with Ben’s wife delegated to baste it. She had four chickens in her two ovens here. Another turkey and a chicken were at Jana’s. There were huge potato kugels baking that should be crisp and brown on the surface and inside, moist and oniony. She had made baba genoush and hummus yesterday, by the vat. The eight vegetarians would have plenty to eat. For fruit, pomegranates and an apple and carrot tsimmes redolent of cinnamon and nutmeg. The tsimmes had been cooked in the morning and would be reheated on the stove. All the umbrellas were lined up by the door for the use of anyone needing to cross the compound. The rain was coming in hard, at a forty-five-degree angle. It drummed on the ro
of.
The honey cakes had been baked the day before and were laid out under towels on top of the piano. Almost every couple had brought wine, some kosher, some not. She was sure Gordon did not care. Natasha distributed the bottles along the tables. Ben’s youngest boy laid the short ritual on every plate. Natasha and Judith had put it together on Friday and Mattie had photocopied it.
When everyone finally came to the table and was sorted out, she felt so taut she could scarcely sit. Natasha, beside her, whispered, “Relax. There’s nothing can go wrong now. The food is all cooked. The guests are all here. Everyone’s complained about the weather. Now let’s get on with it.”
David had arrived sometime in the last twenty minutes. She had been too busy to notice. He was sitting between Natasha and Stumpy. All Gordon’s ex-wives were there except his first, who had died in an auto accident. His children were present, and his grandchildren, including those not of his blood (ex-husbands and ex-wives who had married and multiplied) but still of his mishpocheh. Only Dan and his family were missing, and they had come the weekend before. Colleagues, comrades from old battles, drinking companions. Only eight invited had failed to show, and five of those had come over Labor Day. Thus Gordon even at the end commanded loyalty and affection from those who had known him, who had put up with him, who had enjoyed him.
Judith and Natasha rose and lit the candles, blessed the wine and the challah, and almost everyone sang the Shechecheyanu, the Blessing for the New Season. She was amused to hear Stumpy’s loud uncertain baritone raised in song. He had heard it so many times over the years, he had learned it. Everyone dipped slices of apple in honey for the new year to be abundant and sweet. Then the pomegranates. The younger kids began spitting the seeds at each other and painting themselves scarlet with the juice. Outside, the storm was an audible roar. Occasionally a branch broke with a thump, or something hit the side of the house. Please, please, please don’t let the power go out, she prayed each time the lights flickered. There would be no water from the well, no functioning toilets, no way to wash dishes. Please, she begged, keep the power on until the last one of them leaves.
She stood at the midpoint on the table that was raised a little from the others and presided, as she had over so many feasts and rituals since she had come to this house. Gordon had not been observant, but had gone along with her, and then had gradually come to count on the holidays. At first there had been some resistance. Now his older children—older than she—asked her questions about preparing for their children’s bar and bat mitzvahs, about how to put on their own holidays when they did not come to hers.
“Gordon wants me to tell you tonight that I will go on living here after he is gone from among us, and that you will always be as welcome in this house and on this land as you have been before I ever came here. We both want you to know that.”
Gordon managed to nod.
“It’s hard for him to speak now, so I have to speak for both of us.” Once she and Gordon had thought that when the time came to say goodbye to his family, David would stand beside her and they would all meet him as a family member. So they had dreamed, in their arrogant fantasies. She glanced briefly at him where he sat between Natasha and Stumpy. Several at the table were in tears. David was staring at her with his intense gray eyes in his tanned face. People helped themselves to the fish and the chicken livers, and the meal began.
Gordon was propped up in a big chair. He could speak little and simply watched and dozed off, watched and dozed off. He was skeletal by now. His head, too large for his body, lolled on his wasted neck. His skin was gray with a bluish tone. It was impossible to look at him and not think of death. Ben sat on his right side and Larry on his left. Larry looked extremely nervous. Ben was solicitous. His role of the good loyal son was one he had played with comfort for many years. She was grateful to Ben.
She and Natasha went out to the kitchen to start serving the main part of the meal. Gordon used to insist on carving every bird himself. Now Ben had been recruited. David pressed into the kitchen behind him. “I can help carve. I know how.”
“Why not?” She was arranging platters that Natasha, Jana and Ben’s wife were carrying out. The kugels would be served in their baking dishes and cut up at each table. Ben was carving one turkey as David attacked the other. Ben was faster. In the meantime, she cut up the roasted chickens and set out platters of vegetables that had been cooked with them, carrots and onions and heads of garlic, aromatic and almost caramelized. Sarah appeared, tentative, and Judith gave her the vegetarian dishes to lay out. Ben finished his turkey and went to serve it. At once, David paused in his carving and turned to her.
“Judith, I have to talk to you. You haven’t answered my calls.”
“Natasha! Take the last platter of chicken out. David, please finish carving. This is no time for talk. Let’s get the food on the tables.” She didn’t feel particularly motivated to hear his explanations. What was, was. But Gordon wanted a friendship, so she would put up with some self-justification—after the meal was over, after all was done and done well.
For the most part, the dinner went smoothly. There was a screaming match between Sarah’s daughter and her ex-husband’s wife’s son; there were wineglasses tipped over and unlikely flirtations. Ben’s sixteen-year-old daughter was doting on Larry. Incest aside, their levels of emotional maturity were a match, she thought. Everyone ate too much and seemed relatively content. Gordon lay on the sofa where Ben and Larry had carried him and smiled vaguely around him. He drank some wine and ate a bite of turkey and of kugel. Then he lay back, exhausted. But he was still smiling.
After dinner, people sang around the piano Ben’s son was playing while Larry beat congas ineptly. Some sat reminiscing or arguing or boasting. Ben and Mark put the living room back. Breakfast would be a more informal meal, and most of the guests would be leaving throughout the day tomorrow. Judith was overseeing clean-up. David helped, but whenever she let him catch her eye, he projected an urgency she could not manage to ignore much longer.
He finally caught her as she started the dishwasher with the first load. “Judith, I need to talk to you. There’s no use saying there isn’t any ‘us.’ For me, there is.”
Ben’s wife and his son’s girlfriend were carrying in plates. “All right. Wait for me in my shack. I’ll get away when I can. I don’t know when that will be. We can talk briefly.”
When she had cleaned up as much as she could (she had run the dishwasher through two cycles and would do more in the morning), Judith ran to make sure Gordon was all right. Ben and Stumpy had carried him to his bed. There he lay in the sleep of the heavily drugged. Portnoy was curled around his head like a gray fur cap. The cat blinked at her, but Gordon did not wake. He was exhausted. She hoped this last goodbye had been worth the drain on him.
She came back into the kitchen intending to head for her shack. Sarah was sobbing. Natasha, who had been comforting her, began to cry. Kids were rushing through the kitchen. Jana was looking for her roaster pan. Judith found it and then coaxed Sarah and Natasha into her bedroom and shut the door.
“He’s really going to die!” Sarah moaned. “I can’t stand it.”
Judith stroked her back and held her, but she could think of little to say. For the last thirteen years, Sarah had seen her father exactly twice. She longed to disentangle from Sarah and go to Natasha, whose tears simply would not stop. Judith felt exhausted, but she had to summon the strength to comfort both women. It was her role. She did not know if she hoped David would wait for her or give up. She only wished there were someone who could hold her and comfort her as she was soothing Natasha and Sarah.
JOHNNY
Johnny saw her first in the drop of Ralph Petersen’s jaw, the way he strained halfway across the table to get a better look. Johnny had been dozing through the meeting, thinking of leaving, not that he had anywhere to go but home alone. With barely a quorum present, the selectmen were slogging through a utility pole hearing when discussion stopped. Crystal stood
in the open door with the boy pressed to her hip, tears mixed with raindrops streaming down her cheeks. Even before he’d followed Petersen’s gaze, Johnny had caught the scent of her rose perfume, heard the clack of her boots on the gray tile floor. Crystal didn’t see him wave her over, but stared at the table of three selectmen and two empty chairs. The boy saw Johnny and tugged at her, but she wouldn’t move.
Johnny read the expression on her face. He’d caught glimpses of it in the office, when Crystal was upset, but he’d seen it in his wife every time she took ill. That’s what scared him. That inability to move, the hopeless glaze, the lips forming sentences only the speaker herself could hear. All he needed was one of his girls going batty in the Town Hall assembly room.
“Ah, you made it, dear,” Johnny said for the benefit of the curious. “You finished typing up that brief for me, then. Bless you for bringing it in a rain like this.” He took her elbow and steered her to the door.
Although the boy was properly dressed in a yellow slicker with a hood, Crystal’s denim jacket was soaked through. She hadn’t even thought to wear a hat. Her hair dripped in pale strands down her face. He whispered, “What’s going on? Do you mind telling me what you’re doing here?”
It was the boy who answered. “Looking for David. But he’s not here.”
“I couldn’t find him.” She wasn’t talking to Johnny or the boy but to herself. “He wasn’t at work or the barn or his mother’s house. He’s not here.”
