The Cast

by Amy Blumenfeld

  “Yeah, really impressive work,” Adam added.

  Lex and Seth remained quiet.

  “Oh, jeez, look at the time. I gotta go,” Lex said, checking her watch.

  A chorus of “aws” and “already?” soon followed.

  “Actually, we’re going to need to leave, too,” Adam said. “I want to get her home to rest. I’m gonna take a quick shower and pack up.”

  As they went to their rooms, I thought this weekend may not have been the smoothest, but I hoped Becca could edit her memory to highlight the good and weed out the bad.

  “Okay, Lex, car’s all set,” Seth said.

  “You can’t have her just yet,” I said, reaching out to hug Lex goodbye. My comment was innocuous but intentional—a subtle dig and reminder to Seth that Lex was married.

  As I stood in the doorway, watching Seth hold the passenger door open for her, Nolan jogged toward him and graciously stuck out his hand. I couldn’t hear what was said, but the smiles and bro hug said enough.

  I could feel someone approaching me from behind. Before I turned, I caught a whiff of orange scent, which instinctively released a small village of butterflies in my stomach. Only Adam could make hair gel that smelled like a Starburst candy seem sexy. Wow, he’s been using the same products for over two decades! I thought.

  “Hey,” Adam said in his unique baritone. I spun around.

  “Hey,” I replied. I hadn’t intended for it to sound as singsongy and flirtatious as it did.

  “This weekend was great. Really cool. Thank you for having us. It meant a lot to Holly to be here. I actually had a way better time than I thought. That drum set is sweet! And I really appreciate your taking care of us this morning.”

  “Of course. Please. Don’t even mention it.”

  “And by the way,” he said, more hushed and breathy, “you look fantastic and, most important, very happy. Sal’s a really good guy. You did okay, J.”

  I could feel my cheeks blush. “It was great to see you, too. I’m so glad you both came.”

  Adam smiled. “Well, thanks again,” he said, and walked down the driveway to load the bakery truck with their bags, leaving Holly and me alone at the front door.

  Holly laid her hand on my arm. “I hope we can see each other again soon. Maybe I’ll call you for some parenting advice after the baby is born.”

  “I’m no expert, but I’m happy to talk. And I’ve got a ton of hand-me-downs in storage from my twins. If you’d like them, they’re yours.”

  “Wow, I’d love that. Thank you!”

  It wasn’t lost on me that this was not the first time Holly would be taking my secondhand goods. However, the baby clothes were being passed along as a gift.

  I waved from the porch until my guests were down the driveway and out of sight. When I returned inside, the house seemed quiet and cavernous. Becca was loading the dishwasher.

  “Drop the knife, put your hands in the air, and step away from the sink!” I bellowed, in my best NYPD imitation.

  Becca wiped her wet hands on her cargo shorts. “This weekend was incredible. I can’t thank you enough for everything.”

  “It was totally my pleasure,” I beamed.

  She pulled out the elastic band from her hair, reset her pony-tail, and twisted the band back in to secure it. “No, Jord. Really, thank you. I know this didn’t turn out how you’d wanted, but I really do appreciate all the time and effort you put into this.”

  “How are you and Nolan?” I cut right to the chase.

  She sighed. “The conversation isn’t over. That video he made was charming, but it doesn’t solve anything. It’s a step, but you know as well as I do that ideas marinate in his head until the option to change a decision no longer exists. He gets these visions of how things are supposed to be and—” Becca stopped when her cell phone rang.

  “Hello?” she answered. “Oh, hi, honey! Oh, sweetheart, I miss you, too. No, don’t cry. Daddy and I will be home very soon. Just a few more hours!”

  I could hear Emma’s high-pitched voice on the other end: “Promise you’ll never go away again!”

  “Sweetheart, we’ll be there soon. And I have a surprise for you when I get home!”

  Becca ended the call and flashed the type of smile I knew would soon collapse into a frown and progress to tears. “I need to get home,” she said. “I just want to be with her. I’m sorry. I have to go.”

  I wrapped her in a tight embrace. “It’s just a blip,” I whispered in her ear. “You’re going to be fine.”

  My hands rose and fell on Becca’s back with each heaving sob.

  “How can I promise I won’t ever go away,” she said, “when I could die at any moment?”

  “None of us can make that promise. We do the best we can to reassure our kids that they’re safe and secure. But there are no guarantees. Not for anyone.”

  “I want a guarantee!” Becca wailed. She clutched her stomach and slowly slid down to the floor, pulling her knees to her chest. “Nolan would miss me, but he’d move on. But Emma? She doesn’t have siblings. All she has is us. I hope one day she has friends like I have, but for now she’s too little. Without me and Nolan and her grandparents, who does she really have?”

  I understood the bond between an only child and her parents better than anybody, and the thought of losing my mother at a young age—or even now, as an adult—made my own chest tighten and my stomach turn. Other than the loss of a child or spouse, I could think of no greater nightmare than the death of my parents.

  I slid down next to her and said, “Me. I love her like my own, Bec. As long as I’m around, she’ll never be alone.”

  She shook her head and began to bawl again. “Goddammit, I worked too hard to get that child! I want to see her grow up. I want to be her guide. I want to teach her right from wrong and how to figure out what’s important and what’s bullshit. I don’t want someone else having that privilege. I am her mom.”

  We sat there sniffling on the floor, squeezing each other tightly as if we were on the roof of a skyscraper with no guardrail.

  “What if we learn after the surgery that my margins aren’t clean and I end up needing chemo? That’s going to completely undo Emma.”

  I pulled back. “Let’s take things one step at a time. We’re not there yet. But if that’s where we end up, then maybe Nolan’s job situation will be a blessing in disguise.”

  She wiped her runny nose with the back of her hand and looked at me, bewildered. “What are you talking about?”

  “He’ll have more time on his hands, you know?”

  She stared at me. “No, I don’t know. I haven’t a clue.”

  An electric jolt ricocheted through me. How could I have let that slip? I’m an idiot! I need to save face but couldn’t look her in the eye. “All I know is that he’s questioning whether he wants to stay at the firm. That’s all.”

  “‘That’s all’? What are you talking about? Why wouldn’t . . .”

  The door from the basement to the kitchen swung open. Nolan and Sal walked in, carrying large bowls of freshly picked vegetables from the garden.

  “Why didn’t either one of you tell me?” Becca asked, spite shooting back and forth between Nolan and me.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” he asked, stopping in his tracks.

  “You had so much on your plate already, Bec,” I blurted out, purposely beating Nolan to the punch and raising my palm in his direction. It was the same gesture I used during trials to discourage a client from potentially saying something he’d later regret.

  “But he’s my husband,” she said, clearly miffed. “Shouldn’t I know? Aren’t we a team?”

  I had to admit, I wasn’t sure to whom that last sentiment was directed—Nolan or me.

  “Bec,” he began, “I’m sorry. I would have told you everything, but I didn’t want to stress you out even more, given what’s going on with the surgery stuff.” He put down the bowl of cherry tomatoes and sugar snap peas he’d been cradling.

&nbs
p; “But you told Jordana!” she fumed. Her eyes filled with a combination of frustration and fury, and her cheeks flushed. “I’m not a sick child, you know. I don’t need to be coddled.”

  Nolan and I glanced at each other for guidance. He seemed frozen, his mouth agape. I decided to field this one. “We just thought we were helping—”

  “We?” She pounced, her eyes bugging out from their sockets. “Are the two of you already in cahoots, deciding what I should and shouldn’t be privy to? Determining what I can and cannot handle? Is this what it’s gonna be like? Are you guys just rehearsing for when I’m gone?”

  “Becca!” Nolan and I exclaimed at the same time.

  “No!” he cried. “Not at all! Stop it!”

  “Bite your tongue!” I blurted, and then found myself instinctively spitting on the floor, superstitiously shooing away the evil spirits, the way our mothers did when we were kids.

  “Bec, I’ll tell you everything,” Nolan said. “I’ll lay it all out right now. Gordon called me into—”

  Becca straightened her posture, closed her eyes, and exhaled slowly. She seemed to have tuned him out. “Save it for the car. We need to leave now,” she said with composure. “I just spoke with Emma. She’s homesick.” She paused a moment. “Well, actually, I think I’m homesick. I want to go get her.”

  I could see her lip quiver at the mere mention of Emma’s name.

  “Sure, okay.” He nodded rapidly, like an obedient child wanting to please. “Gimme five minutes.”

  I got up and passed her a box of tissues. “Call me when you get home, okay?”

  She nodded and blew her nose. “You don’t need to protect me from everything, you know. I’m an adult. I appreciate where it’s coming from, but it’s okay to let me breathe.”

  I felt punched in the stomach. I would do anything for her, yet somehow I had become stifling, like an overbearing mother. She was rebelling against me and wanted her space. “You’re right” was all I could say without either fighting back in my own defense or disintegrating into tears.

  Nolan returned with their luggage, as well as the plastic bag of rice containing his cell phone. “I’m ready whenever you are,” he said.

  Becca walked over and sifted through her quilted duffel. “I got this shirt online, but it doesn’t fit. If you want it, keep it; if not, bring it to yoga on Thursday and I’ll return it.”

  Yoga! Thursday! My heart swelled. She still wants to share clothes! She still wants to exercise together! She still loves me!

  “Thanks,” I said, trying to play it cool. “Did you remember to pack the DVD?” Shit. Was that too motherly?

  “I’d never forget it,” she said, with a wink that I hoped meant, Don’t worry, we’re all good but feared meant, Stop micromanaging me. I couldn’t tell.

  Sal and I escorted them outside and watched from the front porch as Nolan held open the white Cadillac’s passenger door. Becca sank into the beige leather seat and lowered her sunglasses over her face.

  As the Caddy slowly descended the steep driveway and they waved goodbye, Sal wrapped an arm around my waist and I closed my eyes. I thought of Adam davening on the deck on Friday evening. I thought of my father, standing by his bedroom window with a prayer book in hand, twenty-five years earlier. And then, right there next to Sal, I began to whisper the Hebrew prayer for healing, along with Becca’s name.

  When I was finished and opened my eyes, Sal kissed my head. “Amen,” he said softly. A lump formed in my throat. “Let’s go home.”

  Part Two

  Chapter 19: Holly

  Adam claimed I was nesting. I disagreed. My sudden fixation with organizing the bakery’s inventory was all about guilt. Our emergency room scare on July 4 made the baby’s arrival seem imminent, and, as excited as I was to become a mother, I couldn’t shake the fear that soon I’d be neglecting my first child. Adam laughed. He promised the store would be fine and that our staff would pitch in. He even vowed to maintain our mom-and-pop touch by continuing to make all the deliveries himself. “We’re partners in everything, babe,” he said reassuringly. “You’re never flying solo.”

  For ten days after the reunion, Adam and I hung out in the back of our shop, counting wax paper rolls, checking the flour supply, and having all the tachless (Yiddish for no-holds-barred) talks about parenting and lifestyle we’d been too superstitious to explore prior to that point. Somehow, between reviewing Excel spreadsheets and signing paychecks, we resolved to accommodate my need to feel more modern without abandoning our religious observance. Then, on a Wednesday afternoon, just after I’d negotiated patronizing vegetarian restaurants in exchange for providing our offspring with a yeshiva education, my water broke on the floor of the stockroom.

  Adam pulled the bakery truck up to the front of the store while our cashier escorted me outside. The rest of the staff crowded onto the sidewalk and waved goodbye as we turned away from the curb.

  For most of the ride to Methodist Hospital, neither of us spoke. Car horns and the tinny melody of the Mister Softee truck were the only ambient sounds as we bobbed along Flatbush Avenue. But after the stars aligned and we found street parking a block from the hospital—which I told myself was a good omen—Adam shut off the engine and turned to me with a smile, his eyes wet and overflowing.

  “I’ve made a lot of deliveries over the years,” he sniffed, “but this is the one I’ll remember for the rest of my life.” We weren’t even out of the truck, and already he’d dissolved into a sappy, nostalgic mush.

  As a forty-year-old first-time mother who had difficulty getting pregnant, I just assumed giving birth would be hell. I’d heard countless war stories from trim twentysomethings about how painful it had been, so I figured it would be exponentially worse for a doughy geezer like me. Fortunately, I was wrong. My labor was so smooth and quick, Adam swore it was divine intervention. “I’m telling you, babe,” he said, cradling our swaddled newborn in the recliner beside my hospital bed, “God’s rewarding us for all those years of anguish.”

  Eight days later, at seven o’clock on a Thursday morning in the sanctuary of a synagogue in Crown Heights, our son was circumcised. I’d attended hundreds of brises over the years and had always been moved by witnessing our loved ones carry out a commandment and tradition that dated back to biblical times. But when our day arrived, I stood at the far end of the room with my spine pressed up against the emergency-exit door. The fact that a surgical procedure on a critical part of my son’s anatomy was about to take place atop a pillow on my father’s lap with a Manischewitz-soaked gauze pad to numb the pain was just too much to bear. Somehow, this whole scenario had been a perfectly acceptable and beautiful ritual when I was a guest; but now, as a parent, I thought it was absolutely barbaric.

  Fortunately, the procedure was over in a matter of seconds and the sweet wine calmed the baby quickly. Adam made some passing remark about his boy being an alcoholic lightweight and then carefully lifted him from the pillow into the crook of his elbow.

  Typically, this was the moment when the dad would introduce his son to the community and make a speech about the inspiration for the chosen name, but Adam fell silent. He stood at the microphone, staring down at our seven-pound, ten-ounce bundle, completely smitten and mesmerized, as if no one were watching and the two of them were alone on the living room couch. With his free index finger, Adam slowly traced the perimeter of the baby’s face, starting at the top of his forehead, curving down around the outside of his cheek to the tip of his chin, and then up the other side. As I glanced around the room, I got the sense that everyone was as transfixed by my husband as he was by our son. Perhaps, had we been younger first-timers, or had this baby had been an addition to an existing gaggle of kids, someone in the crowd would have inelegantly cleared his throat, or sighed loudly, or made a show of pulling up his shirtsleeve to check the time. But the elephant in the room was alive and well, and no one dared interrupt the new dad who’d waited nearly twenty years to see this day.

  Final
ly, Adam kissed our son’s forehead and tilted his little face toward the crowd. “Baruch Hashem,” he said, his voice cracking as he leaned toward the mic and looked directly at me.

  “B’Ezrat Hashem, with the help of God, this miraculous day has come. B’Ezrat Hashem, with the help of God, we have become parents to this beautiful baby. B’Ezrat Hashem, with the help of God, my incredible wife, the love of my life, my Holly, is healthy and had an uncomplicated delivery. B’Ezrat Hashem, with the help of God, may our son, Ezra, who is named in honor of my father, Edgar, always be watched over and blessed the way God has watched over and blessed us with Ezra to become a family.”

  Nose blowing ricocheted throughout the sanctuary. In all the years I had known Adam, never had I seen him so raw. He weathered our countless failed fertility attempts well, always maintaining his cool, rarely wallowing or growing frustrated. But that morning his elation was so evident that I couldn’t help but wonder how much of his own suffering he had shielded in order to keep me afloat.

  Later that night, after I put Ezra down in his bassinet, Becca called to check in and rehash the day. She mentioned how touching the ceremony had been and that the only thing that had kept her from completely losing it was the vision of my father, dressed in his blue-and-white seersucker suit, standing among a sea of men with prayer shawls over their heads.

  “He looked like he’d come straight from a Martha’s Vineyard cocktail party and arrived in a scene from Fiddler on the Roof,” she chortled.

  “Yep. That’s my dad. He is who he is.”

  “So, uh, speaking of seersucker suits in Anatevka, where are you and Adam on that front? Is there a miniskirt in your future? Or are you going to keep things status quo?”

  “Actually, we’ve made some headway,” I said. “I’ve decided that wearing open-toed sandals and a denim skirt that ends just below my knee in no way changes my faith or desire to be an Orthodox Jew. I love keeping kosher. I love keeping Shabbos; it’s twenty-five hours when I get to unplug and relax. I don’t see that as restricting—it’s a lifesaver. Could I change my mind and go back to wearing thick stockings and long sleeves in July, the way I have for the past twenty years? Sure. Could I take a Saturday afternoon trip to the mall like I did as a kid? Doubtful, but never say never. All I know is that right now, this is where my heart is and Adam is cool with it. I want to literally let my hair down. I need to feel that my son is entering a world steeped in culture and tradition but also progressive and tolerant of the way I was raised.”