Measure of Love

by Melissa Ford

  “She is,” the woman says dryly, pushing her curls away from her face. She leans against the back of the sofa, propping her hair up as if it needs to get a better look at her scalp. “She’s something else. I’m Rebeccah, by the way. Her daughter.”

  She holds out her hand, so I shake it, noticing the smoothness of her skin. How cold and dry her hand feels against mine. “How is she doing today?”

  But I can tell what the answer will be before she even speaks. “She’s not getting better at all. The doctors are talking about hospice.”

  I involuntarily put my hand over my heart, as if I’m trying to hold it in place. “I am so sorry. I didn’t know. I thought that she has pneumonia.”

  “She does have pneumonia,” Rebeccah tells me. “But she’s also very old. Probably older than you think. My parents have been married over 60 years.”

  “That’s incredible. So few people stay married these days that I wonder how many from our generation are going to get to say that.” I realize that I’m babbling, but I can’t stop myself. “I was divorced a few years ago, so I think about that a lot. That unless I live to be close to 100, I’ll never celebrate a 60th anniversary. I mean, I usually think about it in terms of a 50th but . . .”

  “It is incredible,” Rebeccah agrees. She pokes around in the bag and then folds it closed again. “I wanted to get my father something to drink so he’ll take his pills. Want to walk with me for a moment?”

  I dutifully follow after Rebeccah, who keeps her hands busy twisting the Kleenex she keeps balled in her fist. I have no idea what to say, what could possibly bring comfort to someone about to lose her mother. My own throat tightens at the thought.

  “My parents were actually separated for a while when I was younger,” Rebeccah confides. “They’re a good reminder for me that not all great love affairs are smooth.”

  “You’d never know. They seem perfect for one another.”

  “They are perfect for one another. But you take a Belgian Christian and pair him with a feisty Jewish woman who just lost her entire family in the Holocaust, and you have the breeding ground for some pretty terrific fights. In retrospect, they were all so stupid—fights about whether or not to have a Christmas tree in the house, or the hours my father worked. They were only separated for three months or so, though it felt so much longer than that. And then they came back together again. My dad always joked that their relationship was like a meal, and it tasted so good that he came back for seconds.”

  Her statement hits so close to home that it makes the space around my heart hurt. I had no idea, all those weeks as we cooked in the kitchen beside them, that they knew exactly what we were going through in coming back together again.

  “I wish I had known. I’m remarrying my ex-husband,” I explain. “He was in our class too. But we had no idea.”

  “My mother would have loved to talk to you about it,” Rebeccah says, pausing to wipe a few rogue tears. She blows her nose and steps up to the vending machine, trying to make sense of the change in her hand. She drops in four quarters and chooses the button for the bottle of water. “She liked to give unsolicited advice.”

  I notice that she has slipped into past tense, as if her mother is already gone. As if whoever is in that bed is not her mother who danced through the kitchen much in the same way—it’s not difficult to imagine—that she danced through her travels and volunteer work and even the ship from Europe to America when she was just married. It suddenly seems like a huge loss to have only known her in such a limited way, in such a casual, temporary way. If I wasn’t mindful of it, she would be just another person who came into my life, left, and was then forgotten.

  “I’m a rabbi,” Rebeccah explains. “I do funerals weekly, weddings weekly. But it’s different when it’s someone you love. None of it makes sense. It really makes me wonder if I help grievers at all when I meet with them before the service. Maybe I should just keep my platitudes to myself and recite the prayers and then get out of their way.”

  I’m not sure whether it would be better to agree or disagree with her, so I just nod vaguely and hope that she’ll keep talking to fill the silence.

  “I won’t be able to do the service. I’m going to need to ask someone else to do the service. And the shiva. My husband and children will prepare the shiva. I’ll need to be there for my father. My father will have no one standing with him, holding him. He’s going to need someone to hold him, who is solely there for him.”

  Rebeccah sits down unexpectedly on the wooden bench next to the vending machines, and I join her awkwardly. The truth is that the more she talks, the more I want to cry, and it isn’t my loss to mourn. It isn’t my wife or my mother or even my close friend. And yet, I can feel the tears making tiny pinprick holes in my throat, and I imagine the soft tissue riddled with dots of light. I cannot think of anything more supremely unhelpful than breaking down in front of the actual mourner and silently soliciting hugs from a person who needs them infinitely more than myself. Impulsively, I lean over and wrap my arms around this stranger, and I can feel her body immediately melt a bit like a snow woman, and her shoulders shake as she releases whatever she has been holding back in front of her parents.

  She cries so hard that her head moves with each sob, brushing my lower lip with her curls. I gently take the water bottle out of her outstretched hand, set it on the bench, and pat her back in a way that I hope is helpful. She is right. There are no words or actions that other people can do that make things better. There are only words or actions that make things worse, which is a great unfairness of life. That the cards are stacked against those trying to comfort the mourners since they often come up short. Still, either the rhythmic taps on her back are working, or she is running out of tears, because the shakes start moving farther and farther apart in time, and her breathing slows as we both listen to it. In and out. In and out.

  Like a beauty queen who has been slumping and unconsciously returns to proper posture, Rebeccah blows her nose and returns to the calm demeanor of a middle-aged female rabbi. “Crap,” she laughs self-consciously. “I’m supposed to have the answers. Mourners are going to come to this funeral expecting me to have the answers, and I have nothing to give them.”

  “I think you just have to tell them whatever you believe,” I admit. “Even if it’s not the sort of stuff they’d ever say in rabbinical school.”

  Rebeccah snorts, a middle-aged womanly snort that ends with her blowing her nose, twisting her Kleenex tightly, and resting her head backwards on the uncomfortable edge of the wooden bench.

  She is silent for a long time, and with her eyes closed, I fear that she has inadvertently fallen asleep. I am about to shake her shoulder when she speaks with her lids still shut. “I believe that we never have enough time. That I’m not sure why we place the word ‘good’ before ‘bye.’ That my father will need to relearn more things than I have time to teach him with my mother gone. That marriage is good. That marriage is hard. That as much as this hurts, having as much time as you can get is better than giving up time with someone to protect your heart. That life is messy. That everyone will be expecting bagels at the shiva, and I don’t know which types to order so we have the least amount of leftovers. I think that’s about it in terms of beliefs. My mother was so good in giving advice. In knowing the right thing to say. She was so good in helping me make sense of my own thoughts. I can’t believe that she left me to do the most important grieving I may ever do on my own. Without her next to me.”

  Neither of us gets through that last thought, and we both sit unabashedly on the bench, crying our eyes out which seems par for the course in the hospital. No one rushes over to ask us what is wrong because it is so clear what is wrong. Why we are sitting on that particular bench. Rebeccah doesn’t point out that I have no reason to be crying, as if her own grief is so enormous that it makes sense that it would engulf everyone around her like a
tidal wave. Because that is how grief should be, sucking everyone in and silencing the bells as Auden begged, rather than expecting us to go on with life as if nothing has happened. A nurse discreetly comes by and without saying anything, leaves a box of tissues between us.

  “I am so sorry,” Rebeccah says suddenly, sitting up and grabbing my hand. “I don’t even know you. You just came to drop off pasta for my parents, and you got this mess-of-a-woman crying to you about ordering bagels.”

  “Oh no,” I tell her, grabbing two tissues from the box. “I’m sorry. I’m really embarrassed to be crying when you’re the one in mourning. It’s just that I liked your mother so much from the little I knew of her in the class. She was just so . . . brave.” I settle on the last word without really knowing what I am applying it to—the Holocaust, the way she mixed beer with liquor, her attitude about life in general? But Rebeccah nods, as if I have described her mother perfectly.

  “She loved that Reb Nachman of Breslov quote. She had it in our living room in this piece of art she got in Israel when they visited me during rabbinical school. ‘All the world is a very narrow foot bridge, but the main thing is to cross it without fear.’ Too many people let fears control their decisions. And they end up missing out on living.”

  Rebeccah picks up the water bottle and takes a deep breath. “I can’t thank you enough for this. I don’t want to cry in front of my father and set him off. So . . . thank you.”

  She stands up, and I get the sense that she doesn’t want me following her back down the hallway, so I give her one last quick hug. “I know I’m not family, but I’d like to know when . . .” I let the sentence dangle without completion as I root around in my bag for a scrap of paper and pen. I scrawl down my phone number. “It’s also if you need anything. Someone to clean the house for shiva or bring you another meal at the hospital or . . . something else.”

  Rebeccah nods, clearly her mind halfway down the hallway, and she smoothes her hair away from her face and takes a deep breath. I walk away at the same time, feeling guilty that my stomach unclenches as I enter the elevator.

  WHEN I ENTER the apartment, I close the door for a moment and just stand in the silence, not moving, not setting down my things or moving back into the afternoon. I just stand in the silence and think. Then I walk purposefully to our bedroom and tip back the mirror, carefully taking down the note we wrote ourselves months earlier.

  I pick at the shredded edge from the spiral notebook as I read down the list. Take more spontaneous trips. Take a class together every once in a while. See a marriage counselor if we ever need one. Try not to work on weekends or have too many late nights. Go to museums. Talk things out. Cook more instead of getting take out. Come to the school plays. Answer the phone when the other person calls during the work day.

  I trace my finger over our names, the end of his M crossing into the left edge of my R.

  The problem with promises like these, and relationships in general, is that you don’t know if you have six days or sixty years. For so many things in life, we know the duration: a cake is baked in 30 minutes, a baby in nine months, college finished in four years. But relationships are started without any sense of how much time you will have with one another. Will we sabotage ourselves again? Will one of us die? Will we have enough time to hit all the things on our list, or will some be left unfulfilled? And what order do we do things in not knowing how much time we’ll have in the end?

  And does it even matter? Is it about what you do, or is it about simply being with one another?

  The tape is no longer very sticky, having pulled with it residue from the frame. I shuffle through the desk drawer until I find the Scotch tape, and then I post it carefully behind the mirror again, making sure that the ragged edge is barely visible. I wonder if this is the first time the paper has come down, or if Adam has had his own silent crisis of faith and needed to see the reminder himself.

  Chapter Eleven

  LISBETH TELLS ME that there’s a surprise for me in Arianna’s apartment. I suspect that the surprise will be white in color with perhaps a cerulean blue sash, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not thrown off, wondering how the two women connected. Beyond seeing each other at my first wedding and a few random events here and there, their paths haven’t crossed. My family and friends are like school lunch trays separated into individual servings.

  More than the dress itself, I’m intrigued by the idea of Lisbeth knowing that Arianna could do the adjustments, how she got it to her apartment, and whether Arianna is expecting me to show up. Frankly, if she’s okay with me showing up, considering that we’ve barely been talking. Maybe to Arianna it feels like comfortable silence, but to me, the lack of words are screaming sirens. Warning. Warning.

  I swing into the deli next to her building, intending to grab a cup of hot chocolate, and at last moment, switch it to a bottle of water out of guilt. I feel scolded by every magazine cover shrieking out stories that I am supposed to be concerned about caloric intake, especially before the ceremony, but all the anxiety in my life feels like an angry, insatiable creature living in my stomach demanding to be fed fat-laden cinnamon rolls and steamy whole milk mochas. Every minute that we shift closer to the wedding, the monster snarls out his potato chip demands coupled with the remainders of the to-do list: procure a photographer, meet with a florist, order the cake, purchase stamps.

  Maria, the owner’s daughter, looks considerably more chipper from the last time I saw her in the summer. I note that she is still wearing the ring, and she recognizes me too, asking about Beckett and moving at a rate that is practically racing by Maria standards.

  “How are the wedding plans coming along?” I ask her.

  “It already happened,” she informs me. “Three weeks ago at St. Christopher’s.”

  “So your dad came around?” I question, accepting my change as well as the free cookie Maria passes me from the glass display case.

  Maria’s face doesn’t change as she shrugs her shoulders. “Nah, but I did it anyway. We paid for the whole thing, so he couldn’t really stop us.”

  “Good for you,” I tell her and slip out next door to Arianna’s building, eating the cookie—which, to be fair, could have been for me or Beckett.

  Arianna is home alone, sans Ethan or Beckett, which makes the stillness all the more still when she unzips the hanging garment bag without speaking. I’m not sure if she’s not speaking because she has nothing to say to me anymore, or if she’s not speaking because she doesn’t want sound to ruin what she thinks is the first glimpse of my wedding gown. Who the hell knows what sort of story Lisbeth concocted as she dropped off the garment bag?

  It is still the impossibly delicate gossamer bodice, the white on white on white, and smoothness on rosette that is divided only by the muted cerulean blue sash, which has been casually slung over the shoulder for safe keeping. Even if I’m not as sentimental about it as I think I probably should be, I am still one hundred percent in love with the dress. Arianna holds out the fabric carefully, inspecting it with the eye of a dressmaker, examining the stitch work and the places where the material attaches for a moment and then pulls apart like two ice dancers.

  “It’s gorgeous,” Arianna announces in a normal voice. I realize I’ve been watching her more than I’ve been watching the dress, holding my breath which I now let out audibly, though Arianna probably thinks is a response to the gown. “Classic Shoshana. Unique without being too far out there. A totally memorable dress. Too bad you can’t keep it forever. Lisbeth said it was on loan?”

  “Do you have time to make the adjustments?” I ask timidly. Once upon a time, I would have felt it was my right to have her make the adjustments—the benefit one gets from being best friends with a seamstress. We used to have a sense of ownership that went hand-in-hand with that feeling of comfort. If I wanted a glass of water, I would have walked into the kitchen and opened her cabinets,
taking down any of the simple Crate and Barrel cups but eschewing the painted beer glass from the Guinness factory that she doesn’t like anyone else to use. If I needed a Post-it note, I would have grabbed one from her bottom night table drawer. If I needed a new roll of toilet paper, I would have taken it from the under the bed box in her room. I still know Arianna’s apartment as well as I know my own, but now I don’t feel quite as comfortable helping myself. Now I’m not entirely sure where I stand in her life, and it might push me over the emotional edge if I heard her suck in her breath if I reached for my own glass.

  “Sure,” Arianna says casually, making me believe that she isn’t nearly as conflicted about the space between us. Her phone buzzes, and she peeks at the screen, smiling at something that once upon a time she would have shared with me, and slips it back into her pocket.

  I self-consciously strip down to my panties and let Arianna help me into the gown. It’s a little snugger than the sample in the store, or maybe I’ve put on that much weight in the last few days. I shrug my body around, trying to fill in all the available space as Arianna works the zipper up. “It’s a little tight,” I admit, sucking in my breath as well as my stomach.

  “I can fix that,” Arianna tells me. She circles around me, digging her fingers between my skin and the material, measuring the gown by the span between thumb and pinky. She has gotten new highlights, threads of pale gold mixing through the rest of her hair. She’s gotten new makeup, something smoky on her lower eyeline. She’s sporting a hammered-gold bracelet with a fringe of three red beads hanging from the center over the back of her hand.

  “Pretty bracelet,” I comment, and Arianna shakes her wrist, allowing the hem of her shirt sleeve to hide it.

  “Thanks,” she tells me. “I bought it for myself recently. I’ll have to get you one.”

  The old Arianna would have told me about the store, mentioned other pieces of jewelry she considered before settling on the bracelet. Forget that. She would have called me from the store and told me to haul my ass down to wherever she was in the city, not so I could give my opinion, but because Arianna would assume that I’d want one too. She knows my tastes as well as she knows her own. The new Arianna is tight-lipped, not volunteering additional information. She leans intimately close, tugging a bit at the material over my breasts.