After I'm Gone (16 page)
But this, this job? This he could do, better than almost anyone.
S
habbat dinner, although a relatively new ritual in the Brewer-Sutton household, was already a smooth-running routine, a testament to Linda’s organizational skills and her determination to see a thing through once her mind was made up. Linda had decided last fall, when Noah entered fourth grade, that Judaism was due for a comeback in her household. True, the winter sunset was long past by the time she got home from work, but her timing was otherwise impeccable. The tenderloin was resting on a cutting board, the rösti potatoes were minutes away from crisp hot perfection. Two loaves of challah waited in the center of the table, wrapped in a green linen napkin. The candlesticks and kiddush cup had been polished to a high shine, thanks to the cleaning woman who now came twice a week. She also baked the challah, but Linda made and braided the loaves in the morning, before leaving for work.
The only thing missing were Linda’s sisters and her mother, who had promised to make it tonight for the first time in weeks. Not that Linda cared—she had started observing the Sabbath for her kids, determined to ground them in something, anything—but Rachel had been unusually adamant that the entire family should gather. Strange, because they had seen one another only three weeks ago, for a perfunctory Hanukkah at Bambi’s house. It had been a lackluster affair, not so much Hanukkah as Christmas Eve with potato pancakes to Linda’s now critical eye. Too much emphasis on the gifts, almost no ritual. Bambi hadn’t even bothered to dig out the dreidel, much less buy gelt for the children, and they couldn’t light the menorah properly because it turned out the shamas had broken off and never been resoldered.
But Rachel said she was feeling stir-crazy in advance. A blizzard was predicted for Sunday, a big one, and Linda would be on-call once the storm hit, giving interviews about outages and power lines. Linda thought this part of her job a bizarre custom. The people without power couldn’t hear or see her confident predictions about the crews working to restore electricity, and those with power didn’t really care about those without. They just wanted to know when their streets would be plowed.
Her boss had already told her to pack a bag and check into a centrally located hotel tomorrow and to be prepared to work around the clock through Monday morning. Linda never minded long days or hard work; she was the family breadwinner. And her being on-call didn’t upset the family’s various child-care arrangements because Henry had left his public defender’s job a few years ago and was now teaching science at City College, one of Baltimore’s best high schools. His newfound professional contentment was like the little woodstove in the corner of their great room—it didn’t really contribute much to the bottom line, but it made everyone feel a little cozier.
And, oh, how Linda envied him at times.
I never get snow days,
she thought self-pityingly, removing the string from the tenderloin and starting to slice. The warm meat almost sighed at the knife’s touch. Linda was the only decent cook among the Brewer women, and she recognized her own smugness on this topic. Linda knew all her faults. The more honest you were with yourself, the less you had to worry about the world’s opinion. She was always trying to persuade her bosses of this approach. Tell the truth, whenever possible, and start with yourself.
“Hey, sis.” Rachel came in the side door, hung her coat and scarf in the alcove of cubbyholes and hooks that Linda’s family used as a de facto mudroom. Seeing the ready platter of tenderloin, she took it from Linda and placed it on the table. “Are you making a béarnaise? Go ahead, and I’ll do whatever else needs to be done.” She waved her arms around theatrically.
Her boyfriend, Joshua, waited in his coat until Rachel pointed him to an empty hook. He then stood in the center of the kitchen, pretty much in Linda’s path, until Rachel indicated that he could take a seat in the corner of the large space off the kitchen that served as a family room. Linda liked Joshua. He was a mensch, a word no one would ever use in connection with Rachel’s ex-husband, Marc. But he was so passive, one of those people who never take the initiative in
anything
.
“The good silver?” Rachel asked, still making those weird gestures.
“Sure. Oh, fuck—my carrots,” Linda said, rushing to the stove before the steamer went dry.
“The carrots are fine,” Rachel said.
“The
carrots
are
fine.”
Still nothing. Rachel had thought it a good bit of wordplay, but no one else noticed, not even Joshua, who was in on the joke, or should have been. She began collecting crystal stemware, continuing to flutter her fingers. She wasn’t crazy about religion, but she approved of Linda’s dinners. She was going to do something similar when she had children. Maybe not a Shabbat dinner, but something regular, ritualistic.
With Joshua parked on the sofa by himself—Henry was upstairs, doing something with the kids, no doubt—Rachel continued to set the table, wiggling her fingers at Linda every chance she got, but her sister remained distracted, probably by the weather news. What a horrible job Linda had. She was important only when things went wrong and then she became the face of the public utility, the messenger that everyone wanted to kill.
“Everyone is coming tonight, right?” Rachel asked, putting out the silverware. The good stuff, which had belonged to their great-grandmother. She was surprised Bambi hadn’t pawned it at some point and wondered at her decision to give it to Linda. Had she despaired of Rachel ever having a family? Rachel and Marc had owned nice china and silver, but it had come from his family and gone back to them. She wondered if he and his second wife, a pretty, pliable girl whom he had married in an insultingly short time—and most definitely not the woman he had cheated with—were putting out the silver tonight. No, she would be forced, as Rachel had been forced, to eat in the Singers’ claustrophobic dining room, the cold and formal antithesis to this lively hodgepodge.
Bambi and Michelle arrived. Somehow, it was still a surprise to Rachel how much Michelle resembled their mother now that she was in her twenties. And yet Bambi retained some indefinable edge, even at fifty-five going on fifty-six. Her beauty was more profound, while Michelle’s felt flashy and fleshy, a little too carnal.
The meal ready, the prayers recited, Rachel took the seat to her mother’s right and plopped her hand between their plates. Still, no awareness. Was she going to have to send up a flare? It was Michelle, down the table, who finally noticed. Magpie Michelle never missed anything shiny.
“Is that a
yellow
diamond?”
“It was my grandmother’s,” Joshua said quickly, more or less as they had planned. “We got married this week.”
Rachel and Joshua had
not
planned on the long silence that fell. A grave, judging silence.
“Congratulations,” Henry said when it became clear that the other three women were not going to speak. “It takes a tough man to marry a Brewer woman.”
“Oh, hush,” Linda said. “That’s hardly the right thing to say.”
“And I’ve never thought of you as particularly tough, Henry,” Michelle said.
“I’m the only son-in-law,” Henry said, unperturbed by Linda’s corrections or Michelle’s insults. “I’m thrilled to have the company.”
“You weren’t always the—” Michelle began. It was hard to say if she stopped speaking of her own accord or because of the look that Linda shot her.
“When?” Bambi asked, slicing her tenderloin into very tiny pieces.
“Two days ago,” Rachel said. “At the courthouse.”
“Smart,” Henry said. “No tax implications for 1995.”
“I mean, we’re very happy for you—we all love Joshua,” Bambi said. “Only—why that way? You could have had a small wedding.”
“I don’t like weddings,” Rachel said. “I never have.”
“Yes, we all remember your Vegas elopement,” Michelle put in, earning another glare from Linda. It didn’t intimidate her. “You could have had a judge just come to a party and marry you.”
She was enjoying this, Rachel realized. Michelle was usually the one who disappointed the others. Taking an extra semester to get her degree, then moving back home because she had done absolutely nothing about finding a job, threatening to answer those “live model” ads in the back of the
City Paper
if her mother and sisters didn’t get off her back. She would, too. Michelle was never lazy when it came to vindictiveness.
“No, you can’t,” Joshua put in. “If you get married anywhere but the courthouse, it has to be someone religious.”
“Okay, so a rabbi, then.”
“I don’t like rabbis.” True. Very true.
“Then a Unitarian minister or a Wiccan priestess or whatever,” Michelle continued. “It’s only a ceremony. What’s the big deal?”
“I just—I was embarrassed,” Rachel said. “It is a second marriage for me.”
“But it’s Joshua’s first,” Bambi said. “At least—I think it is.” A gentle yet pointed barb. Joshua had been accompanying Rachel to family gatherings for more than a year now, but he never offered much information about himself.
“It is,” Joshua assured Bambi. “And although it was hard to let go of that vision I’ve carried of my wedding day, I found I didn’t mind.”
Joshua’s joke fell flat. Even Rachel found it wanting, and Joshua’s sense of humor was a large part of his appeal. But she wouldn’t glare at him or correct him. She didn’t want a Henry, who loved to be nagged so he could play the henpecked spouse, straight out of a sitcom. Linda and Henry’s marriage worked for them, but it wasn’t right for her. And Bambi’s way hadn’t worked for her, either. Rachel was going to find her own way of being married this time.
“May I throw you a party?” Bambi asked. “A small one, for family and friends?”
“
No,
” Rachel said quickly, too quickly, but she had to shut that down. Why did Bambi always want to spend money she didn’t have? Good Lord, couldn’t she remember what
parties
had cost her? But, no, she never remembered because she had been bailed out time and time again. And whose fault was that? Mostly Rachel’s.
Linda’s oldest, Noah, bored by talk of weddings, begged to be excused and allowed to eat his food in front of the television. The three younger girls—“Linda breeds like an Orthodox,” Bambi had once noted in an unguarded moment, exhibiting that weird anti-Semitism that only Jews could carry—understood enough to realize they had been gypped out of being flower girls. Their voices rose, cascading over one another’s until Linda silenced them with a few well-chosen threats, softened by a promise of dessert if they behaved. Rachel looked forward to the day when her children would join them, hoped the cousins would be close.
“So,” Henry said, “Linda tells me this blizzard is going to be the real deal. The big one. Is everyone prepared?”
Rachel smiled at Henry, grateful that he had managed to divert everyone from the topic of her marriage—although Michelle left her place for a better look at the ring, which even she couldn’t help admiring. The talk ebbed and flowed away from Rachel. Henry had a gift for public relations, too, Rachel realized. Or maybe he just had a lot of experience at soothing angry Brewer women.
Linda brought out the dessert, Berger cookies and ice cream. Linda was very canny about knowing when to do things herself and when to delegate, Rachel thought, where effort made a difference and where it didn’t. Rachel sipped her coffee. The evening hadn’t been as she had hoped, but it was behind her now. The announcement had been made.
Then Bambi asked out of the blue: “Have you told Joshua’s parents?”
“We had dinner with them last night,” Rachel said.
“That’s not a yes or no,” Michelle said.
Jesus, Michelle, go to law school already.
“We did the same thing,” Rachel said. “As I did with you. I waved my hand around a lot, trying to catch the light. His mother noticed—but it’s her mother’s ring; she gave it to Joshua.”
“So you told them last night,” Bambi said.
“They happened to guess,” Rachel said. “When they saw the ring.”
“But they knew
first
.”
“We had to reschedule our Sunday night dinner with them because of the blizzard, just in case.” She had known this would be a sensitive point, but there was no way to tell Joshua that Bambi must be first. She would sulk for days now.
“We could have had a wedding party in conjunction with my birthday,” her mother said. “That’s only three weeks away.”
“But that wouldn’t have been fair to you, stealing your thunder that way.”
“I don’t care about my birthday,” her mother said. “I’m going to be fifty-six. It’s a nothing age.”
“We’ll have a huge blowout when you’re sixty,” Linda said.
“Please—I’ll want to celebrate that even less.” A pause. “I got pregnant on my twentieth birthday. January 30, 1960.”
The sisters looked at one another.
“Mother,” Linda said. “Don’t be silly. I was born September first, and I weighed nine pounds. That would make me the world’s largest preemie.”
Rachel assumed—and assumed her sisters were assuming—that her mother had tripped up on the oft-told lie about Linda being conceived on her parents’ wedding night. December 31, 1959. The girls had long ago figured out that their parents had sex before their wedding night. They rather liked them for it. They also liked their mother for her polite fictions about it, her old-fashioned decorum. But now she was taking it too far, telling such an obvious lie. Even Noah could see through it, if his attention weren’t consumed by the weird soup he was making from his ice cream and cookies.
Her mother stood. “Michelle, we really should go. I have to get home before the blizzard.”
“It won’t even start snowing until Sunday,” Linda said.
“I want to make sure I have what I need. Maybe I’ll drive to the Giant and buy all the clichéd things. Milk, toilet paper, bread. You know our driveway: If it’s as bad as they say it’s going to be, I won’t get out for days.”
“I’m not ready to go,” Michelle protested.
“I’ll take her home,” Rachel promised. “It’s not that far out of my way.”
