I could feel myself grinning as I watched her match hats and aprons to her pinecone family. We were both so consumed with her project that we didn’t hear Sam pull into the garage.
“Dad, meet the Autumns,” she said, and told him about the project she’d thankfully hijacked from me.
Sam kissed me. “Are you going to compensate her for once again saving your bacon?”
I shook my head. “She’s got the gift, that’s for sure.”
Lili was hyperfocused on her pinecones, but I could tell she was listening.
“I know exactly where I’m taking you girls for dinner. Grab your sweaters,” Sam said cheerfully.
“You must have sent off your newsletter?” Since the economy tanked, he’d been tense, busying himself crafting client email messages with hopeful tidbits about market trends.
“It’s a masterpiece. So what do you say, Lil?” He grinned.
“Too much homework to catch up on. You guys go. I’ll be fine.” Her phone started vibrating, and she picked it up and read the incoming text. She smiled as she pounded away on the keyboard.
I leaned over to her and stroked her kinky hair, not wanting to leave her alone.
“You lovebirds need your smoochy-smoochy time,” she said. Her whole demeanor had changed since she received the text.
I hoped it was from Kara or Megan, but I suspected otherwise. “What are you going to do?”
“Susan worked me out hard, so I’m just going to go finish my homework and go to bed early.” Her phone buzzed again.
“You sure?”
“Go on, Mom. You two need a night off from me.”
Sam looked at me and mouthed, “She’s right.” He loved being with Lili, but he’d always needed time alone with me, and took the lead on planning long weekends away at least once a season. Much of his job involved entertaining, and he said he craved his “Barbara time.”
“I hate to leave you, but all right. There are a few leftover drumsticks and some rice in the fridge.”
“Okay,” she said.
“We won’t be home late,” Sam said.
“What time?” she asked eagerly.
“Ten or so,” he said.
“Great, have fun.” She returned to her texting.
“Lili,” I said.
She looked up.
I pointed to the table. “You’re really good at this.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
I went up to our bathroom to brush my teeth and rub cover-up over a brand-new pair of angry blemishes that had formed a few inches above my eyebrow.
Sam met me in the hallway. “You look pretty.”
He moved to kiss my cheek, but his eyes lingered a few seconds on my two new pimples.
“Lucy and Ethel.” I rolled my eyes up toward my forehead.
He laughed as he guided me down the steps, out of the kitchen, and into the garage.
“So where are you taking me, Mr. Mystery?” He did his Groucho Marx eyebrow-raising thing as he opened the car door for me. He popped in his favorite Bruce Springsteen CD and held my hand as he drove through the empty downtown streets toward loud polka music and the smell of lake and bratwursts and beer. Oktoberfest.
We parked and walked toward the revelry. A whistle sounded, the polka music stopped, and we followed the crowd to the mouth of a tent. A short man encased in an Usinger’s sausage costume took the stage, his arms suspended over the bulky red cotton around his middle. He raised the microphone to his lips. “Welcome to the finals of our annual bratwurst-eating contest.”
The whistle sounded again, and four people started cramming bratwursts into their mouths, buns included. A few looked as though they were eating their body weight in pork product. Nobody besides Sam and me found this humorous, maybe because the stakes, twenty-five pounds of Usinger’s, were high. We walked away from the tent, and after we caught our breath from laughing, he asked, “Can I get you a brat?” We started all over again.
Sam stood in the brat line while I scanned the picnic area for a place to sit. Most of the patrons were college kids, but there was a group of women roughly my age sitting at a center table, one of whom looked familiar. Yes, it was Dawn.
She was contorting her face in a way that suggested she was doing some kind of impression. The rest of the table was cracking up, and one of the women, a heavier-set version of Dawn, was doubled over with laughter. Another woman reached into her purse and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and they all lit up. Dawn must have felt me staring at her, because she turned around and waved me over. I walked toward the group feeling self-conscious in my Ann Taylor Loft sweater set and slacks.
Dawn stood up and slung her arm around me. “This is Barbara. Her daughter and Megan are best buds. And Barbara, these are my elementary school buddies. Trish, Pam, Mel, Kit.” She pointed at each of them.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, coveting her childhood friends. I wanted to sit at Tzippy’s kitchen table and dunk mandelbrot in tea and laugh with Dawn and her friends’ abandon. Although Sheri made me laugh, it was different. We didn’t belly-laugh. No strawberry custard flew out of our nostrils. Tzippy and I, we really knew how to crack each other up.
“Sam here, or did he go out of town?” Dawn asked. She’d grown up in South Milwaukee, which mean that her “Os” were double the length of those of the people who grew up in the northern suburbs.
“In the brat line.” I pointed to the tent ahead of us.
She took a long drag of her cigarette. “Megan said the girls got together today after school.”
“Yeah, I wish they’d do more of that.” The ache from leaving Lili returned with a vengeance.
“And your mom?”
I sighed. “I’ll tell you some time over a stiff drink.”
“I want you to call me if I can help,” she said.
“I just might,” I said, and excused myself to join Sam, who had found two spots on a long picnic bench. A young girl with a T-shirt full of breasts stood up to leave.
“Careful. I got a splinter in my ass from this bench,” she warned. She reached up to adjust her ponytail and revealed a belly tattooed with an image of a marijuana plant and the words “Heaven Hemp Me.”
“I got you mustard.” Sam put a few packets on the table.
I thanked him, and we dressed our brats and bit into them with gusto.
“Dawn’s here.” I looked over at her table, where she was resting her head on her hand and listening intently to the woman I remembered as Trish. I thought of Dawn standing at cross-country meets in her scrubs or jeans and a T-shirt while the other moms arrived in their yoga outfits or stylish suits if they’d come from work. Her sex appeal and single status marginalized her. I’d often wanted to march over to Dawn to tell her that I didn’t fit in with these mothers either, that my childhood could top anyone’s in the outcast category.
“A dollar for your thoughts.” Sam put his warm hand on my shoulder.
“Lili.” I’d rather talk about Lili than my existential loneliness.
“She seemed happy tonight,” Sam said.
“Yes, because I was distracting her with an art project. She told me how much she missed running. She just hasn’t been herself.”
“Could be a whole lot worse.” He nodded toward the girl with the tattoo and the breasts, her legs straddling a Harley as a fat middle-aged biker stuck his hand down her shorts.
I laughed. “I guess you have a point. Look, do you mind if we head home? I’m a little tired.”
“It’s barely nine o’clock.”
“I know. Sorry to be a party pooper.”
He wrapped his arm around me, and I put my head against his chest, one ear tuned to the Harley’s motor and the drunken laughter of Dawn and her friends, and the other to his heartbeat, steady and whole.
I barely noticed the Nissan Sentra parked in front of our house, but when we pulled into the driveway, we saw specks of orange light coming from the screened-in porch.
“What the heck is going on?” I said
as the garage door opened.
We got out of the car and followed the gravel path around to the porch. I heard someone giggle as we neared the screen door.
“Babs and Sam are home.”
“Lili?” Sam put his hand on the door handle, but it wouldn’t turn.
More giggling. And then I smelled the cigarette smoke.
“Open the door, Lili,” I said sternly. “Now!”
Lili released the latch and let out a cloud of smoke. My eyes adjusted to the dark, and I could see Taylor standing behind her, holding a can of Red Bull. Lili crossed her arms over her chest without an ounce of contrition.
“Get inside, girls,” I said, and followed them into the house. They must have been smoking at the kitchen table, because ashes dusted Lili’s place mat. I hated the smell of cigarettes.
I pointed to Taylor’s backpack. “I’d like you to leave now.”
“Mom, she just came over to borrow my history book.” Lili was a rotten liar.
“How dumb do I look, Lili?”
Her voice sweetened. “Should I have called you first to see if it was okay?”
“Cut the crap. We came home early, so you got caught. Now you’re going to have to deal with the consequences.” I was practically roaring. The sight of Lili through a haze of smoke had made me insane.
“You said you missed me having friends over,” Lili tried as Sam shot her a look.
Taylor’s spooky green eyes penetrated me, as if she wasn’t going to let me forget that she’d seen inside me during that dinner with my mother and that she knew Barbara Pupnick-Blumfield, Kool-Aid mom and parenting guru, was an hysteric. I hated this girl.
Taylor put her empty Red Bull can on the table, flicked back her stick-straight hair, and walked toward the door.
“And one more thing before you go, Taylor,” I said in my most commanding tone, trying to reestablish my dwindling authority.
She turned around and with fake earnestness said politely, “Yes, Mrs. Blumfield?”
“The trash can is over there.” I pointed to the corner. I could feel Sam’s eyes on me.
Taylor smile-smirked. She’d had a good orthodontist, I could tell. “Of course, Mrs. Blumfield.”
Lili looked mortified and a little scared, too. Good. She should be afraid of me. I showed Taylor out of the house, through the front door, the entrance we used for perfect strangers, and locked the door behind her.
“Jesus, Lili,” I said back in the kitchen.
“You humiliated me,” she mumbled.
“Lili, you were smoking in our house,” Sam said.
“I don’t want that girl here anymore.” Before I could stop myself, I added, “I can’t stand her.”
Lili and Sam gaped at me. I’d rarely said an unkind word about anyone. It wasn’t because of my virtuousness, though; gossiping, like overeating or drinking too much, was a sign of weakness and poor impulse control. I kept my mean thoughts to myself.
“She’s trouble,” I said repeating my mother’s assessment of Taylor Miller.
“Let’s talk about this, Barbara,” Sam said.
“You and Lili talk about this, Sam. And when you’re done, Lili, you can clean up those pinecones.”
I stormed upstairs to my room, slammed the door, and climbed under the blankets, reeling from the turn the evening had taken. A few minutes later, Sam came up and opened the door gingerly.
“It’s just cigarettes,” he said.
“They’re foul. Never mind the cancer, I hate the smell.” I hadn’t minded Dawn’s smoking because it was clearly a social thing; my mother used her cigarettes to facilitate her disappearances, like a girl who sucks her thumb to fall asleep. Lili needed to stay far away from cigarettes. And Taylor Miller. “You okay?” Sam sat down on the bed.
“I’m not taking back what I said about Taylor. I can’t stand that kid.”
“Really, Barbara?” He studied my face.
“Really, Sam. I came home on Monday, and she was sitting on the counter eating ice cream out of a carton with a spoon.” The vitriol in my voice hurt my own ears.
He whistled. “That’s bold all right.”
“She puts her dirty shoes on our couch, and she paints her jeans on with a brush.”
“Uh-huh?”
“And calls me dude.”
“There’s more?”
“Yes, I hate the way Lili acts around her.” I’d always privately questioned moms who blamed their children’s behavior on easy scapegoats like Taylor, uncomfortably pretty and precocious.
“She’ll reconnect with Megan and Kara once she starts running again.”
“I hope so, because I can’t stand Taylor.”
“So you’ve said.” He got up to get ready for bed. “Three times now.”
I followed him into the bathroom. “What? You think I’m being irrational.”
“I get what you’re saying about Taylor, but I have a bigger problem with the intensity of your reaction to her,” he said, squeezing a line of toothpaste onto his toothbrush.
“Great. You just caught your daughter smoking, but I’m the problem?”
He rinsed his mouth out and looked at me.
“Okay, so maybe I am the problem. You cannot believe all the ways I’ve offended people lately.” I told him about the comments that had been flying out my mouth.
“Wow.” He led me to the bed, sat me down, and studied me as if he was seeing me new.
“Wow is right,” I said. “I’m way off my game right now.”
He pulled me toward him. He smelled like bratwurst. “You haven’t been the same since your mother’s visit.” Sam was perceptive when he was paying attention or when he had a stake in the matter. In this case, he did. Me.
“I haven’t been the same since I washed Mrs. Kessler’s body.”
“What are we going to do about it?” he asked, a smidgeon of fear rippling underneath his question. We were losing the me that he knew.
“I need to see my mother.”
“Maybe you two just need some time apart. Let things settle down a little.”
“Maybe,” I said, but I knew there was only one thing to do. The idea presented itself to me as intuition. The rebbetzin could help me find my way, as my mother would have said, and how funny that my way back to my old self would be via June Pupnick.
14
Nearly forty years had passed, the amount of time the Jews wandered in the desert after building the golden calf, since I last set foot inside the Schines’ mansion. I drove slowly up the long driveway and parked in one of the guest spots. My palms were hot, but the tips of my fingers were ice cold. This time I was going inside. I walked the familiar path to the synagogue, faced the arch of the front door, and raised my hand to the mezuzah. I let my fingers travel up and down the engraved metal plate, and then I put them to my lips. There was no Brisket Lady hovering, just me. I submitted to the pull I’d always felt toward the Schines, and to something else that I could now name. My legacy.
It was a Wednesday, and the shul was so quiet that I could hear the grandfather clock ticking in Rabbi Schine’s den. I walked toward the back of the house, the Rebbe’s eyes still following me. Keep your stare to yourself, you’re a guest here, I wanted to say. I stopped at the sanctuary, which still smelled like musty prayer shawls, and looked around at the rows of brown connecting chairs and the dingy shades barely spanning the windows. I turned on the chandelier that my grandparents must have purchased, studying the long crystals of glass, imagining the room as my mother might have known it, red velvet drapes and my grandfather’s guests chatting in their evening wear. The ballroom is filled with men dressed like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, lighting cigarettes in long black holders for women in silk gowns.
I walked to the kitchen and up the adjacent steps to the Schines’ living quarters. The rabbi opened the door. His once-black hair was fully gray, but there were few lines around his mouth and eyes.
“Hello, Rabbi Schine, is the rebbetzin here?” I averted my eyes
out of habit.
He hadn’t looked at me directly since I became a woman, but even without eye contact, I could feel his energy shift toward me, perforating my heart. Not now, I thought as sweat began to bead on my forehead and under my arms. I willed it to stop, but I was sweating onions again, and I couldn’t do a thing about it.
The rebbetzin emerged from the kitchen with the phone cradled against her ear. She smiled as if she’d been expecting me and held up her index finger to signal that she’d be with me in a second. I discreetly wiped my face with the sleeve of my turtleneck as I followed the rabbi into the living room and sat down on the well-preserved couch. Tzippy and I never sat in the living room because it was reserved for their Shabbos guests, people who came to the shul to heal, to reclaim the light in their souls. Now they were me.
“Tell me about your family, Barbara.” The rabbi sat down on the chair opposite me.
“My husband is a financial planner. He’s from the North Shore of Chicago.” I’d heard the rabbi do this to dozens of guests. He’d engage them in conversation, and then they’d melt in his interest. It was what he must have done to my father. I knew better than to succumb to his charm, but it seduced me just the same.
The rebbetzin appeared and exchanged glances with the rabbi, and I stopped talking. “Come, Barbara,” she said.
The rabbi stroked his beard. “Your father, alav hashalom, I miss him.” He didn’t ask after my mother.
“Thank you,” I mumbled.
“And we miss you too.” His words touched the deepest part of me. I’d been Schinified.
I said goodbye to the rabbi and trailed the rebbetzin into the kitchen, which smelled like a Wednesday, coffee and the chopped liver she’d served the rabbi for lunch. She always had to remind him to eat because he became so lost in his studies. It wouldn’t start smelling like Shabbos until tomorrow, when she’d begin preparing her cholent.
I was relieved to see that the Schines had kept their old kitchen table, with its gray marbled top and sturdy metal legs. Tzippy and I had quizzed each other on our multiplication tables here and peeled potatoes for the rebbetzin’s kugels. We’d colored pictures of tulips and butterflies on the legal pads the rabbi bought to write his sermons on, the same ones my mother used to help script the rebbetzin’s talks.
Washing the Dead Page 20
