The Color of Light (24 page)

“It does,” Usher agreed. “It states that you are a smoking hot babe. That seems to make old Uncle Allen uncomfortable.”

“What’s going on in the living room?”

“Nothing good,” he said. “We’re doing everything wrong. Allen doesn’t like Mom’s stuffing. He says Eva’s is better. Also, that Rosie lets Maya get away with murder, and that she could learn something from the way Cilla is raising her kids. He also mentioned that you look wild and that he wouldn’t have let you move to New York if you were his kid.”

“What’s Dad doing?”

“Nodding. He agrees with everything they’re saying.”

Tessa sighed. Her sister Rosie had her hands full setting the table while keeping an eye on her toddler, Maya. At the glorious height of her terrible twos, she was hell-bent on flushing down the toilet anything she could get her chubby little fists on. Tessa could see Zaydie looking their way and shaking his head.

As usual, her dad was blissfully oblivious, in the honored position of sitting at his father’s right hand. Tessa knew how devoted he was to his beloved Pa, anticipating and attending to his every need.

It would have been understandable, forgivable even, if only Zaydie returned his devotion. No matter how hard he tried to be the perfect son, Zaydie reserved the bulk of his affections for his younger brothers. For
them, Zaydie always had a warm smile. When he turned his gaze on Tessa and her siblings, he always seemed vaguely disappointed.

His disapproval extended to Rosie’s choice of a husband and Usher’s choice of a career. But the real throwdown was reserved for Tessa. He nearly had a heart attack when he found out she was going to art school.

Nakkeda nekayvas!
he exploded. Why are you letting her draw
nakkeda nekayvas?

Her parents were nonplussed at his vitriol. Even her father thought he was overreacting. In the end, they decided not to discuss it with him any further, telling him instead that she had exhausted the dating possibilities in Chicago and was moving to New York to expand the pool of available nice Jewish boys. That explanation, he accepted.

Irritated with herself, Tessa shook it off. Ancient history. He’d been through the Holocaust, for God’s sake. Lost his parents, countless aunts and uncles and cousins. She could forgive him a few eccentricities.

Zaydie was seated in the middle of her mother’s couch, a frail, pious old man with a full white beard. He was nodding and smiling as one of the little girls presented him with a posterboard. Taking it into his palsied hands, he sat back deeper into the couch, shaking his head and stroking his beard. Tessa could see him push his glasses down his nose, running his fingers along the poster, his lips moving.

Curious, she moved closer. The posterboard was covered with glitter and glue, carefully ruled lines, photographs cut into the shapes of little boxes or ovals, names scrawled in magic marker in spidery little girl handwriting. Tessa recognized a family tree, going back several generations.

“Wow,” she said. “I thought he didn’t talk about anything from the war.”

“You don’t know about this?” Usher said, surprised. “Zaydie helped her with it. All these names he’s never mentioned before.”

“Really.” Now she was interested, moving closer, squinting to decipher the childish curlicues. But then dinner was called, and the poster was quickly rolled up and put away.

The women drifted into the kitchen. “What a pretty dress,” said her cousin Cilla. Cilla had big green eyes, just like Eva.

“Thanks,” said Tessa. “How do you stay so thin?”

She patted her flat stomach. “You call this thin? I’m a big fatso. Look at this belly. I don’t fit into any of my old clothes.” Tessa nodded politely. Cilla was as thin as a fence post.

“Did you hear?” Eva said. “Cilla’s pregnant again.”

Tessa received a bowl of vegetable soup from her mother and carried it out to Zaydie, sitting at the head of the table, in her father’s place. He looked older than the last time she had seen him, more wizened, more shrunken, more vulnerable, but his eyes were as piercing as ever. In elementary school, the teachers had all remarked on the Moss children’s extraordinary eyes.

“How is New York?” he asked, as he picked up his spoon. “You meet some nice boys?”

“Still looking, Zaydie,” she replied. The conversation was over, he was busy blowing on his soup.

Back in the kitchen, her mother set her to peeling cucumbers for the salad. “How’s Lucian?” Usher said, dicing onions into perfect little quarter-inch squares.

“Oh
—
he’s fine. We have a big show opening in the spring.”

There was a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Tessa had never told anyone in her family the truth about her involvement with her employer. She looked around the kitchen now, at her mother ladling out soup, at the parade of cousins carrying bowls out to the men seated in the dining room, at her grandmother setting squares of kugel onto serving platters, at Auntie Barbara peeling aluminum foil off of a tin pan of stuffed cabbage. She couldn’t picture Lucian here, dressed in his colorful Paul Smith shirts, his funky trousers with the corduroy running the wrong way, circulating among the people in this room, joking with her aunts in his self-assured British accent. He belonged to a different world, her other life. She would tell them someday, she thought. When the time was right. For now, it was better to wait, to keep it to herself, until…

Until what? Until he stops screwing around? Until he marries you? Come on, Tessa. Is that ever in a million years really going to happen?

A wave of nausea washed over her. She put her palms down on the counter to steady herself. Absorbed in his mounting pile of onions, Usher didn’t notice.

Who am I?
she wondered.
Where do I belong?

It came to her suddenly, an epiphany. “I’m going to show Zaydie my sketchbook,” she said.

“Don’t do it.” Usher said without hesitation.

“Maybe he’ll appreciate it,” she said urgently. “My paintings are about the Holocaust, our family history. Maybe he’s changing, maybe he’s ready to open up about it. Look how excited he is about a fourth-grade family tree!”

Usher shook his head. “Don’t even think about it. He really has a weird thing about art. To him, it’s all
nakkeda nekayvas.”

Tessa ran upstairs to her room, drew her sketchbook out of her knapsack. The black leather gleamed dully in the light. She put it to her nose, inhaling the fragrance of the Italian calfskin, and suddenly she felt Raphael Sinclair’s cool hand between her shoulder blades, propelling her backwards around the Cast Hall. Opening the sketchbook to her drawing of him, she turned her head, viewed it critically. It wasn’t as bad as she’d first thought. She had captured the beauty of his face, the drama of his gesture. She ran her finger around the contours of his figure, a smile playing on her lips, thinking of Raphael Sinclair prowling restlessly around her studio, Raphael Sinclair sprawling photogenically onto the red velvet couch that belonged properly in a bordello, kissing her upturned hand. The voices drifting up from downstairs intruded on her reverie. She snapped the sketchbook shut and headed downstairs.

Zaydie was eating his soup. Her father, at his right hand, barely noticed she was there. She stood behind him for a moment, hesitating. She could still withdraw, beat a hasty retreat. She firmed her resolve, stepped forward.

“Look, Zaydie,” she said, her voice trembling. “I want to show you what I’ve been doing in New York.” She opened her sketchbook and drew out the drawings for her thesis project, laying them carefully side by side. The mother and child, the landscape with the boxcar, the family on the train siding, the whirlwind of bodies, her grandmother stooped over the table covered with memorial candles.

“It’s about the war,” she said shyly. “It’s about us.” She drew back, waiting for his reaction.

Abe Moss put down his soup spoon. He looked to the drawings, then at his granddaughter, then back to the drawings again. His right hand
rose from the table, faltering, the skin jaundiced and spotted with age. He slammed it down again with so much force that the plates jumped off of the white cloth.

“This…is…
NOTHING!”
he roared. His face turned red and then purple, mottled with rage.

There was dead silence. All eyes were riveted on Tessa. She felt her face burning. Now, his voice softened, tender, he stretched forth his arm indicating the three tables packed with family, traversing the dining room from the kitchen door all the way to the other end of the living room, his gesture taking them all in.

“This…” he continued in a sonorous voice.
“This
…is something.”

Then he turned his attention to her father, his fierce eyebrows lowering. “Sender. Why do you let her fill her head with this
narishkeit?
And Usher. Why do you let him live in that
goyishe
neighborhood downtown? Why aren’t they married? All my other grandchildren are married. What’s the matter with you, Sender?
What did you do wrong?”

Her father sat like a stone, his face white. Uncle Allen and Uncle Bernie glared at her, shaking their heads. Her face burning, Tessa slunk off to the den.

She had been hugging her sketchbook to her chest. As she unwound her fingers from it, placed it on the desk, she saw that her hands were shaking. Usher was right. It had been a bad idea.

The posterboard covered with glitter glue and little girl’s curlicued handwriting lay on the desk. Tessa skipped her fingers along the generations, finding herself and her cousins, tracing the magic-marker lines back to her grandparents’ pictures. There, in a balloon next to a photograph of a smiling Zaydie, was a group of names she had never seen before.
Sarah Tessa. Usher Zelig. Cilla Bracha. Aryeh Lev. Rifka Maya. Rosa Dina. Noah Ezra.
Underneath each of them was scrawled
Died, 1942.

No lines, no descendants, extended from these names. This branch of the family tree was shriveled and dried up like dead branches. A line connected them to her grandfather. Tessa stared at it, confused.

Rosie came in, ushering Maya ahead of her. She stuck a tape in the VCR. The Sesame Street overture played.

“I think I ruined Zaydie’s birthday dinner.” said Tessa.

“Mom and Dad are really pissed. What were you thinking?”

“I guess I thought it would inspire him to tell me something about our history. You know, I’m doing my master’s thesis on the Holocaust. It’s ironic, isn’t it? Our grandparents are survivors, and I don’t know anything that I didn’t read in a book. Don’t you want to know?”

Rosie rolled her eyes. “Always with the Holocaust. Can’t you just forget about it? Why can’t you paint happy things?”

Instead of answering, she ran her finger along the line connecting her grandfather’s picture to the unfamiliar names. “Do you know who these people are?”

“Sure. Zaydie’s parents. Also, his wife and children. The ones who died in the war.”

Tessa stared at her, not comprehending. “Zaydie had another family?”

“You didn’t know?”

She shook her head, mute with astonishment.

“Four children.” Rosie shivered. “I can’t imagine it, can you?” She turned to look at Maya, mesmerized by Cookie Monster singing that sometimes the moon looks like a cookie, but you can’t eat that.

Her finger stopped over her own name, Tessa pondered. Were they, the children of survivors, and the children of the children of survivors, supposed to replace loved ones that had been lost in the war? Was Zaydie’s disappointment so much greater because of the expectation that they would somehow fill out dear lives that had been cut short?

Thoughtful now, she returned to the kitchen. Her mother was alone, critically confronting a huge brown turkey while the others finished their soup. Looking at it, Tessa was reminded of Dissection Day, and she winced. Glaring at her, her mother handed her a serving bowl and started scooping stuffing out of the turkey’s cavity. Tessa loved her mother’s stuffing, made from leftover challah, spiked with celery, scallions, and mushrooms.

“What’s the matter with you?” her mother said, angrily plopping stuffing into the bowl, “You’re going to give him a heart attack.”

“Sorry,” she said humbly. “I really thought he might appreciate them.”

“Did it have to be today? At our house? At his own party? Your father is….” she left the sentence unfinished.

“Don’t you want to know?” Tessa said plaintively. “Don’t you ever wonder what happened?”

“I know what happened,” said her mother, pushing hair off of her forehead. Her face was shiny with steam. She’d been preparing for this dinner party since Sunday. “They all went up the chimney at Sobibor. My parents didn’t talk about it either. Why do you need to know the details? Did you ever think that maybe it hurts him too much to think about it? Some things are better left alone.”

“Mom,” she said. “How come I never heard that Zaydie had a family before the war?”

“You lived twenty-five years in this house and you didn’t know?” She arranged a serving spoon in the bowl. “Go put this in front of your father.”

Tessa, in disgrace, did as she was told. She set the stuffing down on the table, not quite brave enough to meet her father’s eyes as Uncle Allen glared daggers at her.

“When do you think we’ll be old enough to sit at the grown-up table?” she muttered to Usher, as she elbowed her way in beside her brother.

“When you’re married with children,” he said. “And by the way, I told you so.”

Suri was at her elbow now, holding a pencil and a not-too-clean paper napkin. “Can you draw me a picture now?” she lisped.

“Sure, sweetie.” She drew a horse with a flowing mane and tail.

The little girl regarded it critically. “It needs wings,” she instructed.

Obediently, Tessa gave the horse wings. Suri beamed, and leaned her head against Tessa’s shoulder as she viewed her prize. “We think you should go to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and pray for a husband,” she confided before running back to her seat.

“She told me I should pray for a better job,” said Usher.

The stuffing landed fortuitously on their table. Tessa scraped some onto her plate and passed it on. “Hey, did you know that Zaydie had a family that died in the war?”