Washing the Dead (12 page)

“Mom, it’s me. Open the door.”

Still no answer.

I wiggled the glass knob, and the heavy door swung open. The blinds were drawn, and I heard a whimper coming from the bathroom. I burst through the door like
Hawaii Five-O
’s Steve
McGarrett during the climax of a chase scene. My mother sat slumped in the empty tub in her slip, a lacy strap falling down her shoulder. Her hair was matted, and the whites of her eyes were so red that her pupils looked green.

She was holding a sheet of notebook paper in her hands. I pried it from her gently, and she barely resisted. I unfolded the letter, my bitterness dissolving like a sugar cube in a cup of hot tea.

November 28, 1973

My June,

I’m moving to Wyoming, for you, for me, for us. I will always love you.

Andy

She sat staring at nothing, her hands resting in her lap limply, a string of mucus dangling from her nose. I’d only seen her so unkempt once before, when I was ten and she caught a terrible flu. My father saw how frightened I was by her feverish moaning and wouldn’t allow me to enter her room until her temperature went down. She was even scarier now. I hadn’t touched her since the day after the mikveh incident, and I hesitated slightly before I waded through her fog and climbed into it with her. Stepping into the tub, I squatted behind her and sat down, wrapping my legs around her. I wiped her upper lip with the sleeve of my sweater and rocked her as I would one of the children in Mrs. Kessler’s room.

“Come on, Mom. Let’s get you out of here.” I maneuvered myself out of the tub.

She shook her head despondently. “I’m fine.”

I managed to lift her and guide her to the bed. I covered her with a blanket and lay down on my father’s side of the mattress. We were facing each other, and her smoky breath warmed my cheeks. She closed her eyes. I waited until her lids stopped fluttering before I got up, ripped the note into a dozen pieces, and threw it in
the trash. I removed the bag from the basket, fixing her blanket and kissing her on the forehead before I went downstairs. I was petrified, but I also felt important coming to her rescue, and I was glad she was back, shattered and all.

Neil was sitting exactly where I’d left him. “If she’s okay, I’m going over to Hank’s.” He was always on his way out the door. I envied his clear skin and dozens of Gentile friends.

“No, you stay here with Mom,” I said, stuffing the bag in the garbage. “I’ve got something to do.”

Before he could object, I was out of the house running to the Schines’ mansion, the static of lake water buzzing in my ears. By the time I reached the long driveway, I was sweating and gasping for air. Through the Schines’ window, I could see the rebbetzin standing over the kitchen sink. Tzippy’s shade was down, of course. The light in the carriage house was on. I had no idea what I would say to the Shabbos goy or what I would tell the Schines if they saw me, but I marched up the driveway anyway.

I snuck around the back of the house and through the cold, empty garage, where robbers or raccoons were probably waiting to attack me. I knocked on the Shabbos goy’s door. He was pulling his T-shirt over his head when he answered, and I couldn’t help but notice the thin line of hair that traveled a few inches up from the waist of his jeans. Otherwise, his chest was completely smooth. My father’s chest was so hairy that it looked like he was wearing a black sweater when he undressed.

“You shouldn’t be here, June,” the Shabbos goy said, his shirt still covering his face. When his head emerged from the collar, he said, “Oh, Barbara.”

It was the first time I’d heard him say my name. Piles of clothing and packing boxes littered the floor.

“Oh yes I should be here.” My anger and hurt toward my mother had morphed into something else; now I was her fierce protector.

He pulled down his shirt. I’d never seen his hair out of a ponytail before. It fell around his shoulders, which were broad for a
such a stringy man.

“I don’t care about you.” I glared at him. I’d never seen his face up close. He had blond stubble in the cleft of his chin, a big Adam’s apple, and a finely sculpted nose with delicate nostrils.

He stuffed a sweatshirt into a duffel bag.

“Did you hear what I said?” I walked over to him and kicked the duffel. “I said I don’t care about you.”

“I’m sorry about all this, Barbara.”

“I’m sorry about all this, Barbara.” I mimicked him like a six-year-old, so angry that I couldn’t find my own words.

“I really am,” he said lamely.

“You better be.” I kicked the duffel again because it felt so good the first time. A black-and-white photo fell out of the side pocket. The Shabbos goy and I lunged for it, but I was shorter, so I got there first.

The photo was creased and torn around the border. My mouth slackened as I examined the image of a young girl, probably thirteen or fourteen, standing on a bluff, the lake rippling in the background. She was laughing, her head thrown back, her skinny arms clutching her sides. A teenage boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen, was wearing her sunhat tugged over his ears. The Shabbos goy snatched the photo back, but he was too late. I recognized the hands and smile and tilt of her long neck.

“Who’s the boy in the picture?” I asked. I’d only seen a few photos of my mother as a girl.

He started gathering the other items that had fallen across the floor.

“Answer me.” My breath caught in my chest, and I couldn’t get it out. I started to hyperventilate.

He led me by the elbow to an overstuffed brown chair, then went to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water. “Relax, Barbara,” he said in the sweetest voice, and I hated myself for seeing how my mother could love him.

After a few minutes, I could breathe again. “Please tell me why you have an old photo of my mother.”

He tucked it into his pocket. “You’ll have to ask her,” he said in that nice way.

“Oh, so that’s what adulterers do? They share pictures from when they were young?”

“It’s up to your mother to tell you about this,” he said, his lips set in a firm no.

We both knew that my mother wasn’t going to tell me her secrets. Or maybe she would now that I had climbed into that tub and waded into the darkness that had been pulling her away from us.

“Take care of her.” He walked to the door and opened it for me.

“Oh, don’t you worry. I will,” I answered, my voice full of accusation and love. I walked out his door and back down the Schines’ driveway. The Shabbos goy had confirmed my new role as my mother’s caretaker. Now I’d always know where to find her in the middle of the night.

The first week after the Shabbos goy left for Wyoming, my mother came downstairs and flitted around the kitchen filling bowls of cereal for me, pouring my father cups of coffee, and scrambling eggs for both of us. The second week, she sat at the kitchen table in a dirty nightgown and watched us fix our own breakfasts, commenting absently that I was so grown up. The third week, she took to her bed.

That Shabbos, my dad and I walked to shul without her. The rebbetzin saved a place for me, and the women looked at me with concern. I told them nothing about my mother. I’d been designated the keeper of her secrets and her pain.

Either Rabbi Schine or the rebbetzin, or sometimes both, called my father every day, and the rebbetzen, the Brisket Ladies, Mrs. Katz and Mrs. Pincus, started showing up every few days with brisket and petrified vegetables. We accepted their meals and their concern graciously, although nobody in our house had much of an appetite. One night, I overhead my father talking on the phone, his conversation sprinkled with words like “depressed”
and “psychiatrist” and “emaciated.” I hoped he didn’t know why my mother was in such bad shape.

When I walked by my mother’s door the next morning, I heard her whimpering. I didn’t go into her room to comfort her, but I ditched school early and stopped at the Shorewood Library to load up on books by James Michener, her favorite author, and Jane Austen, mine. I’d figured out the perfect antidote to my mother’s funk. As soon as I walked into the house, I ran up to my parents’ room and knocked on the door. She didn’t answer, so I let myself in. She was in bed dozing, her ivory sheets tangled around her waist. Instead of one of her pretty nightgowns, she was wearing an old Oxford shirt of my dad’s, unbuttoned enough to reveal her pale skin pulled tightly over the birdlike bones of her chest. The room stank of cigarettes and dirty scalp. I emptied her ashtray, then stretched out on her chaise longue and thumbed through Michener’s
Kent State: What Happened and Why,
the perfect bait to reel my mother back into life. I cleared my throat often, hoping to wake her. Finally, she stirred.

She sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. “What time is it?”

It was one of those dark winter afternoons when the sun set before suppertime. I glanced down at my watch. “Four forty-five.”

“You need to do your homework, Sweet B.”

Her voice sounded hoarse and flat, but I didn’t care. She’d called me Sweet B. “Are you hungry? I can heat up some soup.”

“You’re such a good girl.” She grabbed her pack of cigarettes and lit up.

“Do you want to go to visit the rebbetzin?” I asked, hoping that the Schines’ apartment would lure her out of her bed.

“I’m a little tired today.”

I sat with her while she finished her cigarette, and when she got up to use the bathroom, I arranged the library books on my father’s side of the bed. “I checked out some books for you, Mom.”

She climbed back into bed and pulled the covers over her thin legs. “Michener,” she sighed. “I’m going to pick one after I take a nap.”

She went back to sleep, the books untouched. I sat on the chaise longue until I heard my father enter the house. I ran off to my room and pretended I was deeply engrossed in my physics homework when he came upstairs and stood in my doorway, still in his wrinkled white coat, which now looked a size too big. My mother had stopped ironing his coats and feeding him.

“Are you okay?” Even his voice was losing its heft. He walked over to me and lightly pinched my earlobe, like he had when I was a little girl with a mom who read me books about my hero Chaim Pumpernickel.

“Are you?” I asked.

He looked down at his shoes. I’d been so busy worrying about my mother that I hadn’t noticed the defeat in the way he held his shoulders and the purple circles under his eyes. He blinked hard. I thought he might cry. I looked at him again, and I thought I might cry too. He smiled at me. Like Mrs. Isen’s, his olive skin had turned sallow and his eyes were flat.

He knew about my mom and the Shabbos goy.

I stared down at my notebook and reread my study question over and over until the words started to blur.
Does a free-falling object still have weight?

“You seem tired, Dad.” I couldn’t look at him anymore.

“I’m okay. I’m worried about your mom, Bunny.”

I was dying inside for my father. I knew in my heart that he was too loyal to leave my mother, especially when she was sick. Once she started feeling better, maybe my parents would fall back in love. Then again, he never missed an opportunity to go on about the lies of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, so maybe he wouldn’t be able to forgive my mother for hers.

“Me too,” I said.

“Let me do the worrying. You need to go to school.”

The school must have called him about my absence. I felt sick with guilt for making him fret about me. I pulled at the loose seams of my bedspread. “Okay.”

He patted my shin. “I’ll make us my specialty. We’ll take a
night off from the brisket.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“I almost forgot. This came for you.” He reached into his pocket and handed me an envelope before he walked into the hall. I heard him open the door to my parents’ bedroom. A few minutes later he was banging pots and pans around in the kitchen, making me matzoh brei, even though Passover wasn’t for another few months. I opened the letter.

Dear Barbara,

Happy Birthday!! Did Mrs. Kessler make you skip around the room and wear the striped birthday hat? Ha, ha. I’m mailing this early so you’ll get it on your big day. I’ll be thinking of you all day.

Did your mom tell you that my parents found me a match? I saw a picture, and he has reddish hair, like yours. He’s a Rashi scholar and comes from a family of seven girls. I hope he’s not too serious. All of this talk about a wedding makes me nervous. The only thing that calms me is knowing that you will be there to catch me if I faint like you did in Mrs. Kraven’s social studies class, but then it was because the room was too hot and I hadn’t eaten breakfast. My mom said that this shadchen did a good job of fixing up Sari and the rest of my cousins, and they seem happy enough. What if she makes a mistake with me?

Write soon, and tell me all of the news of the shul. I miss you.

Your best friend,

Tzippy

I didn’t have the heart to remind my father that tomorrow was my birthday. Eighteen. I was old enough to vote and drink and not make a fuss over a forgotten birthday. Being an adult was overrated. I couldn’t stop taking care of my mother if I wanted to, but
that didn’t mean I didn’t yearn for my chocolate cake baked from scratch. I wanted to lick the beaters and bowl clean.