Certain Girls

by Jennifer Weiner

  If you need anything . . . if we can help . . . I wrote down names and numbers with one of Peter’s University of Philadelphia pens. The writing on the page didn’t even look familiar. It was like a stranger had stolen my hands.

  The forty-second call was from a woman with a high, sweet voice that sounded almost giddy. “Hi, guys!” she said. Didn’t get the message, I thought . . . her, and messages 22 (a guy trying to sell “Peter Krushel . . . Krushla . . . um, the gentleman of the house” a subscription to the Examiner) and 30 (a computer asking if we wanted to switch our car insurance). “It’s Betsy!” Betsy, I mouthed. It took me a minute to remember who Betsy was, and when I did, I groaned out loud. “Listen,” she said, “I know I’m not supposed to home-test, and it’s not official until your doctor confirms it, but . . .” She paused. I held my breath, staring at the wall, clutching the pen and the pad, thinking, Oh yes, thinking, Oh no. When I looked sideways Peter sat at my desk, smiling at me. “Wait,” I whispered as he turned toward the window. “Oh, please, wait . . .”

  “Congratulations, Mom and Dad!” said Betsy.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  “It doesn’t always work on the first try,” my mother said.

  I gave her a look to tell her that she was being ridiculous. “You had somebody implanted with a fertilized embryo, and now you’re surprised that she’s pregnant? Did they not have health class in your school?”

  “Well, when you put it like that,” she murmured, and ran her hands through her hair. She was wearing her own clothes—she’d made a big deal out of getting dressed every morning—but on top of her outfit, she wore my father’s terry bathrobe, the way she did whenever she was at home. Every time I saw her shuffling down the hall with her hands in the pockets and the hem dragging on the floor, I wanted to cry.

  “We’d been prepared to do three rounds, and then, if nothing happened . . .” Her voice trailed off. On the stove, the teakettle whistled. My mom ignored it, so after a minute, I got up and poured boiling water into her mug and brought it to her, along with the sugar bowl and the pitcher of milk. We were almost out of milk. Milk, I wrote on the notepad on the refrigerator. The words “crackers” and “shampoo” were still there in my father’s handwriting. I wondered if we’d just leave that page up there forever, or if someday I’d come home from school and it would be gone.

  I poured myself juice and sat at the table across from my mother. My hair, still damp, was in a ponytail; my hearing aids were in my ears. I wear them all the time now. I don’t ever want to miss anything again. “So what are we going to do? If we don’t take the baby, does Betsy get to keep it?”

  “I’m not . . . I mean, we can’t . . . Well, it’s a baby,” my mom said, as if this was a news flash. “It’s not a dress. You can’t just return it, or not pick it up at the store.”

  I nodded and sipped my juice, watching her.

  “We have to be sure, though,” she said. “It’s such a big thing. A baby. We have to be certain. It’s forever, you know?”

  “Forever,” I repeated. The steam from her teacup curled toward her face, and she used the heel of one hand to wipe at her forehead. There were purplish crescents underneath her eyes, lines I’d never noticed at the corners.

  I sat there, looking at her for a minute, waiting for her to say something else. When she didn’t, I flipped to a fresh page of the shopping list. Bottles, I wrote. Bibs. Blanket. Crib. “Do we still have my old crib?”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah,” she said, and nodded vacantly. “In the basement. I saved . . .” She stared over my head. “I saved everything. I don’t know why. I just did.”

  Get her back on track, I thought. “Is that the safest kind?”

  “Safest?” She blinked. “I’ll check.”

  “I’ll check,” I said, and made a note. Check on crib safety ratings. Stroller. Car seat. Diapers. Rocking chair. “Hey, Mom? What do they call those slings ladies use to carry babies on their chests?”

  She thought about it. “Slings,” she said. Then she said, “I should probably get a job.”

  I wrote down Job. Then I looked up. “Do we need money?”

  “We’ll be okay. But I should have something to do. Your father thought . . .” She lifted her cup, then set it down without drinking. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll try to write something.”

  “You have to take care of the baby,” I pointed out.

  “In my spare time,” she said. “In my spare time, I could write.”

  I wondered whether she was lying about the money, whether we’d have to sell our house, whether I’d have to drop out of the Philadelphia Academy. “I can take care of the baby after school. You can work then.”

  She nodded. “Maybe.”

  Pajamas, I wrote. Books. Educational DVDs. I’d probably get some money for my bat mitzvah. I could use it to buy things the baby would need. “We’ll be okay,” I told her. She gave me a watery smile. Then she blew into her cup of tea and sipped from it, staring out the window. The leaves outside our window were still dark green. Soon they’d be crimson and gold, falling in drifts to the sidewalk under the bright blue fall sky. People would put pumpkins on their stoops, then wreaths on their doors, and by May the trees would be budding again, the boughs bright and heavy with cherry and dogwood blossoms. I tried to imagine me and my mother pushing a stroller down the sidewalk, one of those fancy ones with big rubber wheels and bright canvas hoods, but all I could think of was my father, walking with me to Rita’s to get a water ice or to TLA to rent a video, his hand warm around mine. In the winter, we’d take my mother’s old sled to Fairmount Park. He’d pull me up the steepest hill, then run down to wait for me, crouching in the snow, his arms outstretched. Don’t be afraid, he’d say, and I’d dig my heels into the snow, balancing for an instant before tilting forward and sending the sled over the lip of the hill, knowing that he’d catch me. He would always catch me. A sob wanted to push its way out of my throat, but I wouldn’t let it. Snow-suit, I wrote. Hat. Scarf. Mittens.

  THIRTY-NINE

  We sat shiva for a week. Then I threw out all of the picked-over deli trays, uncovered the mirrors, and took Joy shopping for summer camp. I cried after the bus drove her off to the Poconos, but I did it in my car, with the windows rolled up and the radio playing, telling myself that I’d be all right, that women survived worse things, war and famine and horrible illnesses, that I could deal with widowhood and two weeks in an empty house. On the first Monday after Labor Day I drove Joy to the Philadelphia Academy, the way I had so many times before. “If you want to come home, just call me,” I said as I pulled the minivan up to the curb.

  “I’ll be okay,” she said.

  She went to school, and we went to services together for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, sitting side by side in the Center City Synagogue, chanting the words of the Ashamnu, the recitation of sins.

  Ashamnu, we sang. We have been guilty. Bagadnu. We have betrayed. We curled our hands into fists and joined the rest of the congregation in striking our chests symbolically with each word. Gazalnu, we have stolen. Dibarnu dofi, we have lied.

  Peter, I thought, holding on tightly to the back of the seat in front of me with my free hand, dizzy with hunger from the daylong fast, dizzy with grief. What had he done? What had he stolen? Whom had he betrayed? Why did God take him before he could even see Joy’s bat mitzvah, let alone his own biological child? I looked up toward the bimah and the Torahs and Rabbi Grussgott, dressed in white. No answers came, only the ancient words of the chant, the melody in a minor key, the sounds of hundreds of fists thumping hundreds of chests as we prayed to be inscribed in the Book of Life for another year, please God.

  Ni’atznu. We have been scornful. Well, God only knew I had. Maybe it was all my fault. Saranu. We have been disobedient. Maybe Peter had been right. I’d been running from my divine purpose. I was supposed to . . . What had he said? Write something real. And I hadn’t. I’d been too afraid.

  Ta’inu. We have gone astray. Ti’tanu. We have misled o
thers. Sarnu. We have turned away from You.

  “Forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement,” Joy said beside me. I bent my head and prayed for the two of us, that things would work out, that I’d find the courage I needed to do the things that had to be done.

  We broke our fast at Samantha’s, and once we’d cleared away the blintzes and the bagels, she’d offered to come over and spend the night, but I told her I thought we’d be fine. After we got home and Joy was asleep, I went through our closet, spreading Peter’s ties out on the bed. I’d give a few of the nicer ones to Josh and keep my favorites—the orange-and-gold one with frogs that I’d bought him for his birthday, the cream-and-gold one he’d worn to our wedding. Maybe I’d sew them into a quilt someday, or use them to line a little purse for Joy, something she could carry at her own wedding. The suits I’d already sent to Goodwill, along with his good wool winter coat, but I’d kept some things: the Penn sweatshirt he’d worn on the weekends, the mug Joy had made for him in nursery school that read WORLD’S GREATEST DAD, where he’d kept his dry-cleaning receipts and movie-ticket stubs and spare change.

  I sat cross-legged and leaned against the headboard in the big, empty bedroom that would, I feared, always feel big and empty to me now. I rolled the ties into tie-balls and put them in a paper shopping bag. Then I got off the bed and sat down at the small wooden desk against the wall. Peter had used the desk for his work and to pay the bills. I’d never written a word there, not even my signature on a check. You remember how, Lyla had told me, but at that moment, in the darkness, with the empty bed stretched out beside me and the empty years looming before me, I wasn’t sure.

  Okay, I thought. You can do this. I turned on the light, retied the belt of Peter’s bathrobe, and took out a notebook and a pen. Once upon a time, I wrote, just to get myself started, and then the world fell away as I leaned into the pool of lamplight over the desk and began again.

  FORTY

  “Honey?”

  My mother was standing at the bottom of the stairs, wearing the red dress I remembered from pictures of Maxi’s movie’s premiere, the dress that my father had loved. “What do you think?” she asked, smoothing the skirt, tugging at the sleeves. “Too much?”

  I shook my head. “It’s pretty,” I managed. “Where’d you find it?”

  “Closet.” She pulled at the top uneasily. The dress was cut to leave her shoulders bare, and her skin was tan and gleaming. You look beautiful, my father would have said if he’d been there, and maybe he would have kissed her, too, if he thought I couldn’t see. And if she thought I wasn’t listening, she would have said, You know, you don’t have to flatter me. I’m a sure thing. Then he’d whisper something in her ear, and she’d duck her head, blushing, pleased.

  “Well, at least it still fits,” she said, and watched me carefully, poised to grab me and catch me as I wobbled down the stairs. With me in my new not-too-high heels, my mom and I were exactly the same height. I’d overheard her on the phone with Rabbi Grussgott about three weeks after the funeral. “Do we reschedule?” she was asking. I’d stood at the kitchen door, holding my breath. I knew what the rabbi would tell her, which was that in Jewish tradition, you don’t cancel a simcha because of a tragedy. Not a wedding, not a bris or baby naming, not a bar or bat mitzvah. You don’t cancel, because in the midst of life we are in death, and we find joy in the midst of sorrow.

  “Joy in the midst of sorrow,” I said. She reached out and smoothed my hair, tucking a curl behind my ear, giving my hearing aid a friendly tweak (or maybe just making sure it was still there). “No black suit?” I asked her.

  She shook her head. “I’ve worn that black suit enough for the rest of my life, and I thought . . .” Her eyes filled with tears, but she blinked fast, so they didn’t ruin her makeup. “I thought I’d wear something that I’d worn with your father. I don’t know. Maybe it’s silly.”

  I hugged her, careful not to wrinkle her dress or mess her hair. “It’s not,” I said. “I like it. It’s good.”

  • • •

  Two hours later I stood in the synagogue lobby in my pink dress with the thin straps and the silvery beaded skirt; the dress that I’d bought with Elle, then returned, and bought with Bruce’s credit card, then returned, and finally bought with my mother and Maxi, after I’d lit out for the territories, after I’d been lost, then found again. I wore pearl earrings that had belonged to my great-grandmother, silver sandals I’d found with Tamsin and Todd, and a pink-and-silver shoulder-covering tallis that Emily had made for me. Aunt Elle had taken me to get my hair and makeup done that morning. (“Subtle!” she kept saying. “Sheer! Clean!” Meanwhile, she’d pulled up a chair right beside me and used the makeup lady’s tweezers and glue to affix gigantic long fake eyelashes to both her upper and lower lids.)

  I stood in the lobby, watching as my friends walked in: Tamsin and Todd, Amber and Martin, Sasha and Audrey and Tara and Duncan Brodkey, and Cara with her parents, looking grown-up in a black dress. My family gathered in the little foyer by the front door, by the blue prayer books stacked on a table next to the programs. Beams of sunlight made their way through the high windows, and the wooden floors shifted and creaked underneath us as Rabbi Grussgott gave us last-minute instructions, going over the order of the aliyahs and where everyone would stand when we passed the Torah down through the generations, from my grandparents to my parents then to me. My mom stood on my left side, and Bruce was on my right, in a dark blue suit and a blue-and-white tallis. For a minute the thought jumped into my head that this was what I’d wanted, this was normal: a mom and a dad, and not some weird, confusing, hard-to-explain situation, just a regular mom and dad who loved each other, or could at least look that way in synagogue on a Saturday morning. I’d wanted that so badly, and now, of course, I’d give anything to have my old, freakish family back again, anything in the world to have my father standing there with me.

  The rabbi smiled at me and slipped into the sanctuary, leaving just the immediate family in the foyer: my mom and Aunt Elle and Uncle Josh and Grandma Ann and Bruce. “Please join me in reading responsively,” I whispered. I heard “responsibly” in my head, and I smiled a little. Tyler was in the audience. He’d grown about six inches since his bar mitzvah and had done something to tame his hair. I thought I’d noticed Tamsin looking at him appreciatively on her way in, and I reminded myself to introduce them at the party. Then I flipped through my prayer book, glancing at the passages I’d highlighted, the pages I’d dog-eared: Baruch atah adonai, elohainu melech ha’olam . . . Blessed are you, oh Lord our God, ruler of the universe, who sustains us and has brought us to this joyous day.

  “Are you ready?” my mother whispered, and just as I nodded, the front door eased open, and a man with close-cropped white curls, in an immaculate black suit, shining black shoes, and black sunglasses, slipped inside.

  “Joy,” he said.

  My mouth fell open. Behind me, Elle whispered something you are definitely not supposed to say in synagogue.

  My grandfather smiled as he walked toward me. “I hope I’m not too late.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a soft zippered bag of blue velvet. A tallis bag, holding the traditional blue-and-white fringed prayer shawl. “This was my father’s,” he said, and handed it to me.

  “Th-thank you,” I stammered. My numb fingers worked at the zipper. My mother stood behind me, her hands still on my shoulders. I could imagine her glaring at him, or trying to drag me out of his sight, but instead, she said, so softly I almost couldn’t hear her, “Thank you.”

  “All set?” asked Rabbi Grussgott, sticking her head back through the door. “It’s time.”

  “One more thing.” My grandfather reached into his pocket and pulled out something round and silver. I heard my mother suck in her breath. I remembered the silver dollars from her book. Her father would toss them into the deep end of the swimming pool, and Allie and her sister would dive for them. They got to keep the money after. Dorrie would spend hers on candy and maga
zines, but Allie—my mother—had saved every one.

  “For you,” my grandfather said, and pressed the silver dollar into my hand. “For luck.” He pulled off his glasses and looked at all of us: Grandma Ann and Mona, Uncle Josh and Aunt Elle, and then, finally, me and my mother. “I’m proud of you,” he said. My mother started to cry. I remembered after Tyler’s bar mitzvah, when I was sick in the bathroom and my father had said the same thing to me. It was weird to think of my mother being a daughter the same way that I was, and how she might have been comforted by those words the same way I had been.

  “Joy?” Rabbi Grussgott stared at me, then at my grandfather, looking puzzled. I nodded.

  As we filed into the sanctuary, down the aisle toward the bimah, I looked over my shoulder for my grandfather, thinking that he’d slip into a seat toward the back, and I could call him up for an aliyah, let him drape the tallis over my shoulders . . . But by the time I’d climbed the stairs, stood behind the podium, and opened my prayer book, the faces in the audience seemed miles away, and no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find him anywhere.

  • • •

  “For my first aliyah, I’d like to call Grandma Ann and Grandma Audrey.” I read their Hebrew names, then stood back and waited as they climbed the three steps onto the bimah, touched the spines of their prayer books to the Torah, and kissed them. For one endless, horrible moment, I couldn’t remember the words to the blessing, or the tune, even though I’d been singing it for six years of Hebrew school. Barchu et adonai h’am vorach . . . And there it was, like a piece of candy tucked under my tongue. I opened my mouth and started to sing.

  Baruch atah adonai le’olam va’yed, the crowd—or at least the Jewish people in the crowd—chanted back. Tamsin was in the front row, with her glasses off and her hair down around her shoulders, her features less pointed than delicate, her face a pale oval above her dress. Todd was sitting next to her, perfect and elegant in his suit and pink-and-silver tie.