The Innocents (37 page)

32

They had all worked tirelessly to make it happen. It seemed extraordinary that so many people felt themselves to be a part of it, touching to see the true quotidian magnificence of the community. But there it was, and they had all moved together with the effortless choreography of lives long interwoven. It takes a village to raise a child, and the village of Temple Fortune had begun its work immediately and with diligence. Although the new owners had so far kept on all the employees, Lawrence and the others had been forced to sell GGP for a song; given the family’s altered circumstances it was agreed that, if it could be managed with sensitivity, the Gilberts ought to pay for nothing.

Linda Pearl had made a few discreet phone calls. Those who sent flowers all sent white arrangements so that they would coordinate—tall orchids or velvety roses in sprays of white baby’s breath. Where possible Linda had gone further, steering those who asked toward gladiolus and lisianthus, and hinting that, if they waited and sent them a few days late, the arrangements would be perfectly timed for the party. Roger Press had a cousin who owned a catering supplies website and Elaine rang Jaffa with the news that this cousin had an overstock that he was desperate to shift. All he needed was someone to collect it all, and they would actually be doing him a
mitzvah
. Roger would do it as he was popping round in any case; she believed that there were some blue and white helium balloons and canisters, a box of napkins printed with blue nappy pins, and six white ceramic cake stands, each of which had already been painted with a little blue
mazel tov!
No one wanted them, he’d assured her. These days everyone seemed to be having girls.

Sarah London knew someone who made rich sugar cookies, hand-iced, individually wrapped in iridescent cellophane and tied with satin ribbons. These came in assorted shapes—creamy rocking horses with curling, pale blue manes; chocolate teddy bears with coal black eyes and marshmallow pink paws; pale lemon yellow booties laced with lilac; and smiling storks in royal blue peaked caps, their happy bundles snuggled in white buttercream. Each of these biscuits had a designated space on which could be iced the baby’s name, and the date. After some consideration Linda Pearl, who had been in the kitchen with Jaffa when Sarah London had delivered her gift, went through the box and tactfully removed the storks. It was not known whether a reference to this myth of baby delivery would be considered profane by the
mohel
. Best to err on the side of caution. The rest were arranged in white wicker baskets, and it was hoped that the guests would take them home.

Jaffa had catered herself, of course, and would brook no contradiction. Tanya Cohen had tentatively suggested that she and the Wilson girls might like to be allowed to take care of the breakfast, to which Jaffa had drawn herself up to her full five foot two and declared that such assistance would happen over her dead body. She had been folding
bourekas
, whipping rings of chive into cream cheese, and slicing smoked salmon into ribbons since sunrise.

Outside, it showed the promise of a perfect August day. The sky was clear. In the front garden, Elaine’s balloons had been tied to spokes of the trellis to form a festive arch around the front door, white and robin’s egg bobbing in alternation against the starry pinwheels of pale lilac clematis that covered the house, and over everything lay a fine, gold mesh of hazy sunlight. The climbers had bloomed late; the baby had come early, and both marked a new and precious season. Tanya Cohen, idly stroking her stomach as she and Jasper circled the Gilberts’ house in search of a parking space, had remarked that it had been, hadn’t it, a perfect summer. Their own baby was due in December, by which time the Suburb might be muted and pillowed with snow.

Early that morning Adam had walked to Carmelli’s to buy the
challah
for the
seudat mitzvah
. After the circumcision everyone would stay for breakfast though Adam, his stomach knotted with anxiety, could not imagine his appetite ever returning. But it was a tradition to connect the joy of a new life in this world with the joy of breaking bread with family and friends. Jaffa had catered for fifty, and on this occasion it was not unreasonable to assume that fifty might actually come. Michelle had offered to stop at the bakery on her way but Adam had been insistent as it had felt, urgently, like something he had to do. He had not even really known why until he’d gotten there.

The gingerbread men had been on the top shelf of the display, stacked between a baking sheet of white chocolate Florentines bright with green and amber candied cherries, and on the other side a row of white paper cases filled with sweating marzipan fruit—bananas dusted with cocoa, clove-stemmed apples and rosy strawberries textured with granulated sugar. On the back wall, slotted shelves were piled with black rye, bagels freckled with sesame and poppy seeds, and yolk-washed, mahogany-dark
challot
. When he’d ordered the loaves he had found himself pointing into the glass case. “That one, on the far left.” It was the only one with red buttons set in little pools of white icing; the others, each with three buttons, were multicolored. This one wore only red, as he had always chosen, for Arsenal. And without knowing precisely why, he had snatched the paper bag with sudden jealousy, had dropped a twenty-pound note on the counter and had left, abruptly, without waiting for his change. Walking back to the Gilberts’ house with the warm
challot
under his arm he had pressed the small bag to his face, inhaling the scent, suddenly familiar, of spicy ginger and cinnamon.

And it was then that he had started to cry. He had cried for his father, on whose lap the baby should rightfully be cradled throughout this upcoming ceremony—a grandfather’s ultimate role of honor. That Lawrence would take on this and all other duties could never, Adam had finally admitted in these last months, make right that loss. He had cried for his new son, who at eight days old would endure his first trial on the path toward manhood, who was fragile and perfect, and whom he could not protect from all future suffering and from mourning his, Adam’s, own death one day. Walking through Golders Green, past the kosher cafés serving
café barad
and microwaved
bourekas,
past the Iranian grocer and Polish deli and discount factory outlets of the high street he had cried for Rachel, whom he had never believed could understand his loss and so had never been honored with his confidences. And for the first time, as though uncovering a chasm long obstructed, he had cried for himself. He had been trying since his own childhood to be a man, had tried to teach himself and had failed, sometimes spectacularly, to live up to an example he could only ever strain to imagine. For months now he had been trying to understand the seismic shifts of impending fatherhood within himself—that he would be to a tiny creature that which his father had been to him. As the weeks had passed and he had dreamed, night after night of Jacob, it had come to be the only single thing that mattered in the world. They were having a child, and the depth of that miracle obliterated everything that had ever come before.

He missed his father; missed him in ways that he’d never even had time enough with him to know. And since then he had lost his way and no one—not Michelle, not Lawrence, not Rachel, not even Ellie whom he’d once believed could alleviate his loss by sharing it—no one could make it better. The only things that he could fix now were those that he himself had damaged along the way. His father should be here today and was not; Adam had been angry for almost his whole life, he realized, always doing the right thing and meanwhile raging and resentful that no one saw the magnitude of that sadness. And he had punished Rachel, because she didn’t and couldn’t understand. But then, he had never even let her try.

His pace quickened as he turned onto the Finchley Road. As he crossed the street beneath the railway bridge he tucked the gingerbread man into his inside pocket, its head and arms protruding as if to see out from its vantage point. He pulled his jacket closed, smoothing it down over the slight obstruction. In half an hour the house would start to fill; the community would come to celebrate with them and to learn the name that they had chosen for their little boy, as he entered into this covenant of Abraham.

It had been there, knotted and silent, for more than twenty years. But something within Adam had shifted in that moment eight days ago when he first held his son. No one could make it better. It could not be made better. But it could be made … bearable. If not acceptable then accepted. In moving on, he had then understood, in letting go, he was taking nothing away from Jacob. Until he no longer believed it, he hadn’t known he’d feared that healing meant forgetting. Instead, with the certainty of fatherhood, he now knew that by finally healing, he was honoring the man who would have raised him with generosity, if only he had lived long enough to do so.

When Adam got back to the Gilberts’, Michelle and Jaffa were side by side in the kitchen in companionable silence, Jaffa creating mess, his mother, in purple rubber gloves, neatly eradicating it. Jasper and Tanya had arrived and were sitting at the kitchen table, both folding paper napkins around plastic cutlery. Adam raised a hand to them in greeting but continued past the door into the garden. “Did you know,” Jasper was demanding of Michelle, “that there are opiates in breast milk?” Jasper these days was full of baby knowledge, mostly unhelpful but all enthusiastic. It seemed probable—certain, almost—that the impending Cohen daughter had been conceived of and then conceived as a result of the impending Newman son. Emulation, competition, or perhaps simply coincidence. Lucy Wilson was no doubt also trying.

Rachel had retreated to the bottom of the garden. The sun was behind the house and cast a long shadow over the lawn. At the end, two chairs were still in bright sunshine; she had turned one of these and sat with her back to the round iron table, with her back to the house. At her feet the baby slept in a carry-cot, tightly swaddled in brushed blue cotton. A muslin cloth draped over the handles shaded him. Rachel’s eyes were also closed, her face tipped up to the sun.

“Pumpkin,” he said. “Rachel.”

She opened her eyes. “Hi, Ads. Are people arriving?”

“Rachel,” he said again. She looked up at him.

Rachel had not wanted this party. She had not wanted anyone to gather at her parents’ house to honor the circumcision of their son; she had wanted it done privately, in hospital and by a doctor. She had sat for days on the Internet, laptop balanced precariously on ever-dropping bump, reading about statistics, about pain relief, about techniques. Adam and Lawrence had been subcontracted to conduct similar searches and they had all eventually reached the same conclusion—that the
mohels’
experience surpassed the doctors’ many hundreds of times, and it would be less traumatic, less clinical, to conduct the circumcision at home. Prince Charles, Google informed them, had been circumcised by a
mohel
. The baby could be on a lap instead of an operating table and would be soothed by tender, loving hands. Still, Rachel hadn’t wanted to make it a party. It had been Jaffa’s suggestion, Jaffa’s wish; Jaffa’s impetus.

“Is everyone here?” Rachel asked again, sitting up. She swirled her hair into a tight bun and let it fall slowly, unfurling across shoulders she was now squaring in readiness. She looked around for her shoes. One was under the seat of her chair, the other by Adam’s own feet. He handed it to her.

“Thanks.”

“Not yet. Jasper and Tanya are in the kitchen; I didn’t see anyone else.”

“I wish it was all over. I want everyone to go away.”

He moved the second chair so that it was next to hers and sat, heavily. “Me, too. You can take him upstairs the second it’s done. Will you? We don’t have to pass him around like a parcel, they can all take care of themselves.”

“He’s so …” She was leaning down, buckling the thin strap of a bronze leather sandal. Her hair fell forward, hiding her face. “It just seems so weird that everyone feels like this is something for all of them to celebrate. I mean, I know it’s not a big deal and everyone does it in America and people keep saying it’s tiny surgery and everything, but to turn it into a
party
.” She shook her head, still buckling. They had had this exchange, in various forms, ever since the scan at twenty weeks had introduced them to their son. “
I
wouldn’t want to go to a circumcision and then stand around eating bridge rolls.”