What We Have (12 page)

Clara, it turned out, was a sound sleeper. Who knew what she had tamped into the labyrinths of her large, city-phobic ears.

We lay awake, rigid, waiting for our system to kick in.

Nothing—no Clara. Only
cry cry cry
from our desperate daughter.

“Fuck,” Jacques said to the ceiling. He lumbered out of bed, hauling himself off to the nursery, thwacking the door of the guest room on his way up and his way down. Not a peep from Clara. In the morning we were foulmouthed and foul-tempered. There was a thin film on everything, the newspaper lay unread in its plastic skin, Bacchus glowered from the corner, only Sacha, her aquamarine bilirubin blanket aglow, was cheerful, snuggled, sweetly dreaming on her tiny back.

 

BY THE SECOND NIGHT, WE
had a new system. The idea, we explained patiently to Clara, was for her to take over one feeding in the middle of the night. A “relief feeding,” my mother called it when we discussed this at length on the phone, designed so Jacques and I could get some rest. Thankfully, Sacha was happy to take a bottle, and we had one all set up, the formula ready. All Clara had to do was wake when Sacha woke, give her the bottle, and let us sleep.

The trick was how to wake Clara. We used a broom—handle end, not the straw—to tap with four sharp raps on our ceiling, which happened to be the subfloor of the guest room. Jacques sang out sharp little oaths with each tap.
TAP
(fuck).
TAP
(fuck). Sacha howled miserably, I couldn’t bear it.
Help
, I whispered miserably into the pillow.
We
—
need
—
help
—

By the third night, while Clara slept, Jacques inched his way up along the banister, anger glinting in his eyes. He came back down with Sacha and lay next to me, waiting rigidly, eyes fixed on the ceiling while I nursed.

By the fourth morning, dour and unyielding, Clara was packed and ready to leave, unfazed by our short list of “reasons for dismissal” required by the agency.

Sacha was almost three weeks old, and we were officially on our own.

TECHNICALLY, CHRISTMAS ISN’T OUR HOLIDAY.
On my side of the family, we’re assimilated Jews, both sides from Eastern Europe, but we celebrate Christmas anyway. We got the tradition from my mother, who got it from Sylvia.

Sylvia and Pody got Christmas at school. They got school from Meyer, their father, who wanted them to belong to this glorious new world he’d gotten by happenstance. Meyer had run away from the tsar’s army at fourteen, sailed alone to America, and eventually made his way to Chicago, following an older boy from the boat who knew someone with a leather factory on the near North Side. It was the usual story: Meyer worked his way up, learning just enough English to get by. Eventually he was running the company. He was an earnest man who loved simple and ordinary things—the wetness of city streets in the morning before the first motorcars appeared, the click of the shutter on his camera. The smell of rubber. The crackle of newspaper in his hand. From the papers, English words spelled out disasters he and his family had been spared. Spanish flu. The Great War. He sounded out the unfamiliar words, piecing together the stories, and with each catastrophe avoided, felt a deeper sense of gratitude. The world whirled over their heads like a tornado, while he and his family stayed safe at its windless eye. At the factory Meyer was tough-minded, fearless, but at home, he padded about in his old slippers, mousy and bemused. What to do? So noisy! Words whizzing past like bullets! And the girls, much as he adored them, with their strange tempers, their slamming doors, their moods that hung in the hallways like storm clouds.

Meyer’s wife, Bea, was the one with clout. She’d been born in Chicago, and he deferred to her on all matters of consequence. She knew about America. She knew where the sofa should stand and what cut of brisket to serve at dinner. She knew everything about the girls, their mercurial moods, their intricate after-school lessons. She wanted them out of the public schools—who knew what went on there, so many rough boys?—so once Meyer started making money, Sylvia and Pody were sent down the hill to St. Theresa’s Catholic Academy for Girls. It was clear that nobody bothered to translate
Catholic
for Meyer, who still went to synagogue every Saturday morning. But Meyer liked the school’s ornate front gates and its emphasis on calisthenics. And the girls were happy there. Sylvia, two grades ahead of Pody and a natural mimic, soaked it all in: what kind of coat to wear to keep out the biting cold, how to sweep your hair back, how to roll your trolley money in your socks. Before long Sylvia was listening to ragtime, rouging her cheeks, and dashing off after school to shop with her classmates. December rolled around, and the school prepared for Christmas with a kind of frenzy. Sylvia and Pody learned hymns about Baby Jesus and the manger and “We Three Kings,” and they took part in the December pageant, each begging to play the part of Mary. Mary had been Jewish, hadn’t she? Then Christmas itself arrived. Watching her friends gather around decorated trees, opening lavish parcels on December 25, Sylvia stamped her perfect foot and told Meyer that she and Pody were being gypped. And Meyer, who ruled the factory with nerves of steel, dissolved in the face of Sylvia’s rage. So Christmas was imported into their near-North-Side home along with American slang and flapper costumes. Year by year the Yiddish faded and the ornament collection grew, and Meyer, watching his honey-haired daughters dash out the door in matching raccoon coats and pearls, barely glancing back at him, wondered proudly—and a little sadly—what dream it was he’d garnered.

Sylvia’s Christmases: Beautiful boxes festooned with curling ribbon. A white wire tree. Ornaments made of glass with smaller ornaments inside them. Silver tinsel that shivered when the front door opened or closed.

When my father and mother got married, my mother brought Christmas with her, adding her own idiosyncratic touches. Christmas gave her license for excess. At other times, shopping was complicated for my mother. It could go one way or another. She liked novelty, collecting and arranging—but she also liked things to be neat, spare, the scantest possible version of themselves. Her unpredictable asceticism threatened our trips to the mall. Enough was enough, too much was too much, but the distinction all depended on her mood. There we’d be, the three of us, trying things on in Saks, excited, upbeat, in and out of one another’s dressing rooms, cheering one another on, admiring, and she’d be outside, exuberant, part of it all, when suddenly her mood would change: the skirt that on the rack seemed “classic” was suddenly pronounced “too expensive,” the sweaters too low or too tight, the whole enterprise questioned. We’d leave with bags full, or with nothing. Who could read her? She was an enigma.

But not at Christmas. Christmas was for plenty.

At Christmas, we were spared discernment. We had boxes of presents, ingeniously wrapped, and bulging stockings. A tree weighed down with ornaments. Huge meals. Morning Cookies (the recipe gleaned from
Seventeen
magazine) made with bacon and raisins for a pre-breakfast snack. Broccoli with red sauce at dinner. Our Christmases stood for every kind of plentitude, and long before Sacha was born, I dreamed of re-creating this sense that at least on this one day, every wish could be granted.

Here was another way Jacques and I were different. Jacques grew up in South Africa, the youngest of four children born to a Jewish mother and Christian father in a time and place when any kind of intermarriage was deeply suspect. Christmas—religious holidays in general—was downplayed. His family lived simply, and in any case, it was a midsummer’s holiday in the southern hemisphere, and with four children, institutionalizing plenty was hardly wise. That’s how Jacques remembers it. In fact, having compared photographs of our parallel Christmases circa 1965 or 1966, it’s striking how similar the two scenes look, at least to me: What I remembered as never-ending bounty appears, to the unschooled eye, all but identical to the scene Jacques recalled as conscientious parsimony.

That didn’t matter. The point was that in the here and now, I wanted to fill things up—the fridge, the house, the space under the tree—and Jacques wanted to keep things spare. I wanted things to be perfect, and for me, perfection meant bounty. Things—lots of things. Over the past few months, I’d carefully selected presents for Sacha, even before I knew who she was—eleven gifts, each adorably wrapped. An infant stim-mobile to rotate over her changing table. A teething ring. A clown puzzle with brightly colored plastic rings. Miniature blue jeans from Baby Gap. A stuffed ark with a dozen tiny stuffed animals inside. A pat mat. A splat mat. A squeezie toy for her car seat. A soft blanket that looked lovingly hand-knitted, though admittedly, given the price, it was probably made by machine in central Europe. In the evenings I grouped the presents in clusters under the tree and tried to keep Bacchus from chewing them. Bacchus had his own pile (don’t neglect the dog!). I considered the scene with pleasure, but Jacques looked anxious every time he surveyed the bounty. Is this really what we want to teach her? Unable to identify, let alone fight for the aura I was trying to create, I defended the eleven presents on their own terms. So useful! On sale! Would’ve bought it anyway! “Who,” Jacques asked, looking at me, “is going to
open
all these things?”

I looked at Bacchus’s pile. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.

Then my parents came and brought their own version of plenty. A yellow freezer bag filled with food, precooked and frozen: bagels from the good deli; the red-and-green broccoli; two casseroles; a batch of Morning Cookies. Three suitcases, two filled with clothes, the third with presents. Two shipping cartons full of baby clothes reimported from Sara. Jazz CDs from my father. Whiskey! A carton of wine! And not just things, but energy: their exuberance, their voices, my father’s music wafting down from the bathroom, my mother’s cries of excitement. They were witnesses; our lives were transformed by them into something meaningful, something that mattered.

I couldn’t get over watching my mother with Sacha—she knew exactly what she was doing, she was so casual, matter-of-fact, warm, offhand, just the way I wanted to be, how did she know how to
do
all of this? I wanted a transfusion, I wanted to pour her knowledge into me, I wanted to know how to fold a cloth diaper and use it to make a clean place for Sacha to lay her face, how to swaddle with three taut folds, how to hold Sacha’s ankles in one deft hand and wipe her with the other, how to tuck the phone under my chin while I rocked her, how to slide Sacha into some magical crook in my arms or on my hip while I did a million other things, all casual, easy, and this was astonishing to me, because much as I may have admired certain things about my mother before—her discipline, her tenacity, her organization—I’d never wanted to do what she did, none of it had ever held any interest for me, but now—I was besotted, she was my hero! We ignored Jacques’s grumbling about too many presents (Scrooge!) and my mother gave me the recipe for the red-and-green broccoli (so easy—so 1950s—who knew something with bouillon and cheddar cheese and canned mushroom soup could even be edible?). We talked in a way we’d never talked before, like members of a secret club of two, I was interested in everything she had to say, I was listening, she was listening, it was magic.

Until, of course, it wasn’t. Day One, we were all fresh, happy to see each other, tactful, supportive, overlooking foibles, generous, filled with good intentions. Day Two was still good. But Day Three (Christmas) we all woke up out of sorts. My parents were staying in the guest room next to Sacha, recently occupied by Clara, and when asked, they mentioned they hadn’t slept well. Totally offhand, just a little comment, nothing to do with our bed or the traffic on Cathedral Avenue or the four times we’d been up with Sacha, whose wails no doubt pierced the walls like air raid signals.

They
hadn’t slept well? I tried not to glower at them. Who had?

What was this, Canyon Ranch? Weren’t they here to help?

Oh, and by the way. My father just thought he should let us know the outlet in the upstairs bathroom was on the fritz. And the towel bar was coming a little loose—not an emergency, but if we had a screwdriver handy—

Jacques got out the cordless screwdriver. I flashed back to Valerie in my department hallway. A woman, I thought, with foresight.

Over breakfast, my mother started dropping hints. Sara, she began—apropos of nothing—had started cooking waffles from scratch this winter, using organic wheat flour from her local co-op. If she froze them ahead, she could just pop them in the toaster for Jenny and Rachel on busy school mornings.

Busy school mornings
. That sounded so Norman Rockwell to me, even without the waffles. I shifted Sacha from one breast to the other, irritable, as my mother’s eye panned to the box of cornflakes on our kitchen counter. Expired.