A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life, page 10
“I’m sure it does.”
She glances quickly at her watch. Am I boring her? Does she have somewhere to go?
“It’s time to make Shabbat,” she says.
Shabbat? I’m not exactly certain what Shabbat is, but I’m pretty sure it’s something religious, and I feel a rush of panic and confusion. Didn’t she say something about leaving this all behind? Didn’t she tell me right to my face that this isn’t who she is anymore? I mean, look at her. She doesn’t look like a religious freak.
“I’m an atheist,” I say quickly.
“Good for you. I admire your strength of conviction. Me? I can’t make up my mind, so I like to keep all my options open. I’m more of an agnostic.”
“So you’re not Jewish?”
“I’m definitely Jewish. But I’m also agnostic. I’m Jagnostic. Or Agnewish.”
“I’m confused.”
“Obviously I am too.”
This isn’t helping matters. I need some clarity here.
“So what do you mean by ‘It’s time to make Shabbat’?” I ask.
She gestures to the dining room table, a country antique with stains and scrapes that has the look of a table that’s fed generations of families. There are two candlesticks with short, unlit white candles, a silver cup filled with red wine, a platter with a loaf of bread peeking out from under a white cloth, and a bouquet of tulips in a green glass vase.
“What I mean is it’s Friday night. The start of the Jewish Sabbath. Every Friday at sundown I light Shabbat candles, drink wine, and eat challah.”
“What do you do with the flowers?”
“Nothing. They just look nice.”
I have nothing against candles or wine or bread. In fact, I’m a pretty big fan of all three.
“Simone, I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. This is just something I do every Friday night. You can go hang out in the kitchen or in your room, or you can stand here and stare at me like I’m completely insane. Whatever you want.”
“It’s okay. I’ll watch,” I say, because what could possibly be so threatening about candles or wine or bread? Rivka seems like a pretty together person. I don’t think she brought me here and went through all this just to try some kind of surprise religious ambush on me.
She takes a pack of matches and lights the candles. Then she takes a deep breath and slowly releases it, stretches her neck to the left and then the right, and drops her shoulders. She’s relaxing. I can actually see it happening; I see her letting something go. She lowers her head. Again I notice how quiet it is in here. With a few slow motions she waves the smoke from the candles up toward her face and breathes in the waxy smell of them. She puts her fingertips to her forehead so that her palms are shielding her eyes from the flames. Then she starts to sing quietly in a language I don’t know but assume must be Hebrew. It’s a melancholy tune, and she has a beautiful singing voice that I clearly didn’t inherit from her. She stops, picks up the silver cup of wine, holds it out in front of her, and starts to sing again. I try to imagine what the words mean. It’s obviously some kind of prayer, but I’m not bothered by it because I have no idea what it means. In fact, it’s having a hypnotic effect on me. Maybe it’s the singing coupled with the fire and an afternoon of staring at the white lines on the road. Whatever it is, I haven’t touched a drop of the wine, yet I feel a warm buzzing in my head.
Rivka finishes singing, takes a deep drink of the wine, and offers the silver cup to me.
“Thanks,” I say. It tastes earthy, like dirt and grass and silver. I realize that doesn’t sound so good, but trust me, it’s delicious.
She tells me she needs to go wash her hands and she disappears into the kitchen. Apparently this is part of the evening’s ritual. When she returns she uncovers two small loaves of bread. I’ve had challah before, from the Organic Oasis. The crust is always really hard and the inside is a little dry. She holds one up for me to grab, and I do—it’s soft to the touch—but she keeps a grip on the other end. She quickly half chants, half sings one last thing in Hebrew and then tears a piece from her end, and I do the same from mine. The challah is chewy and dense and slightly sweet. When I comment on how good it is, Rivka tells me she baked it herself.
“Are you hungry? Should we eat?” she asks.
“That’s it?” I ask. “Shabbat’s over?”
Rivka laughs. “No, it’s just beginning. Shabbat lasts until Saturday at sundown. But now we have to eat brisket. The Lord commands that after you light the candles you must eat brisket with roasted baby new potatoes and braised fennel.”
I help set the table, and she brings all the food out from the kitchen. The Shabbat candles are casting a really beautiful glow in the house. We sit down and I wait for her to start serving up the brisket. I’m trying not to salivate openly. But she just sits there for a minute looking at the table and looking at me. She breathes in the smell of the food, the candles, the fire. She pours the wine from the silver cup into a real wineglass, swirls it around, and takes a sip.
“I’m so grateful to have you here,” she says.
“Thanks,” I say. I feel my cheeks getting warm. I look down at my empty plate. “I’m glad to be here too.”
Everything tastes as good as it smells, and again I ponder the unexplored talents that may lie within me. I’ve never spent much time in the kitchen except for the occasional chopping and peeling. The kitchen is Dad’s turf. But now I’m thinking I should start paying attention to what he does in there because if Rivka’s a good cook, maybe I could be one too, maybe even better than Dad.
“Tell me more about Shabbat.” I’m trying to figure out why she bothers with all this if she isn’t living in the Hasidic community anymore.
“Shabbat is really important to me still,” she says. “It is a way to separate out a part of my life, a time in the week when I slow down and appreciate the things around me. I sit down to a meal with family or friends and try not to let anything intrude on this sacred space.”
This makes perfect sense. It sounds nice. It sounds like what happens in my house, at my dinner table, almost every night, and I feel a rush of appreciation for Mom and Dad and Jake.
“I’ve given up much of the hard-core restrictions we had growing up,” she continues. “For example, I’ll run the dishwasher after this meal without any guilt. In my house growing up—in all Orthodox homes—you don’t use any electricity, operate any kind of mechanical device, or do any kind of work on Shabbat. So I don’t observe it in the strictest sense, but Shabbat has always had deep meaning for me. I light the candles and do the blessings over the wine and the bread every Friday night, even if I’m all by myself, which I am quite frequently.”
I make a mental note to come back to this issue of her being alone. Was she ever married? Did she ever live with anyone? Is there anyone in her life now? But before I get to the bottom of this I still need to understand her relationship with someone else. I need to understand her relationship with the Man upstairs.
“I don’t get it,” I say. “You said you’re agnostic. That means you don’t know if God exists, right? Well, then, why do you bother praying to Him every Friday night?”
“Saying those blessings is more about tradition to me than religion. I do it because it’s what Jews do. It’s part of the Jewish tradition. And tradition gives me a sense of my place in the world. It defines me. Whether or not God exists doesn’t matter that much to me in the end, I guess. I’ve lived moments on both sides, moments where God is nowhere to be found and moments where God is so close I can almost reach out and touch Him.”
She pours me a little bit of wine without even asking if I want any. This makes me feel grown-up, like we’re two friends talking and enjoying our meal. Like we aren’t an adult and a child. Like we aren’t a mother and a daughter.
“So tell me about your family. Go back as far as you can. But hold on a minute,” I say, and get up from my seat. “I need to get my notebook.”
She tells me about her great-grandparents in Russia and her grandparents, who came to America in their twenties. She tells me about Mordechai as a young boy and Hannah as a young girl. I’ve filled five pages with notes. It’s getting late. The wine has gone to my head. The Shabbat candles have burned down to almost nothing, and still I’m transfixed—I can’t keep my eyes off them until finally the one on the left goes out and a tall plume of black smoke rises from it, snapping me back into the moment. I ask about her parents and her siblings now. Where are they? What are they doing?
Rivka yawns and rubs her eyes. She stretches her arms high above her head. “Maybe we can save the rest for breakfast, if you don’t mind. Remember, I have six brothers and sisters. There’s a lot of ground to cover. A lot has happened.” Now she’s staring at the remaining candle’s barely flickering flame. “My mother died five years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I am. I don’t know much about Hannah, but I have a feeling I would have liked her. And now she’s gone. She’ll never be anything but a character in a story—in my story.
I get up and take the last few dishes into the kitchen. Rivka is still sitting at the table.
“Well,” I say, “I guess I’ll go to bed.”
She looks up at me. “Simone?”
“Yes?”
“I have a favor to ask you,” she says. She looks sorrowful. Apologetic. A little nervous. “There’s a blessing I skipped over. I’ve always wanted to do it and I’ve never been able to, but I could do it tonight with your permission.”
I just stare at her, waiting for her to say more.
“There’s a blessing that comes between the candles and the wine. A blessing you say over your child. I’ve always wanted to say this blessing, to bless you. I’ve thought about it every Shabbat since you were born. May I?”
“Of course,” I say, and she stands up and comes over to me and puts her hands on my head. They are warm and heavy on me. She closes her eyes. I close mine and feel all the people, all the past, all the slowly unfolding mysteries rushing through me. I take a deep breath. Rivka begins to whisper in this new language I’ve heard many times tonight, this language that is beginning to sound familiar to my ears.
FOURTEEN
I’m a fitful sleeper. I often wake up with my pillows on the floor and the sheets in a tangle around my ankles, and sometimes my head winds up where my feet were when I shut off the light. But this morning I wake up with my head on two pillows and crisp sheets still perfectly tucked beneath the mattress. I don’t think I even have a hair out of place. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the fresh sea air. Maybe it was Rivka’s blessing. Whatever it was, I am refreshed and clearheaded and happy to be here and happy to be alive.
When I find Rivka sitting in the kitchen, she has the look of someone who woke up in a tangle of sheets with the pillows on the floor, if she even went to sleep at all. She’s hunched over a mug of coffee. There are dark circles under her eyes, and her face looks drawn and pale.
“Good morning,” I say.
She smiles weakly. “Did you sleep well?”
“Extremely. You?”
“Not so much.”
“That’s too bad,” I say. “I wonder why.”
She runs her hands through her hair. “Simone, I have something to tell you.” She reaches her leg under the kitchen table and pushes out the chair across from her. She motions for me to have a seat.
I stand right where I am, in the doorway. My mind is racing. This feels like one of those moments when you know that there are only a few seconds separating you in your state of blissful ignorance from some new knowledge that is going to change you forever. And those seconds go by in slow motion. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. But what could Rivka possibly have to tell me? That I’m adopted? That she’s my mother? Maybe she’s going to tell me that she’s not who I think she is, that she’s not my mother. Wait a minute. Did something happen at home? Is everyone in my family okay? Is something wrong with Mom or Dad or Jake? No, that can’t be. I would have heard the phone ring.
I’ve been through this before. I’ve had my fair share of these moments, these conversations, in my life. And I’m still standing in the doorway staring at her when it hits me. Suddenly it all makes perfect sense. Why she found me now. Why my parents have been pushing me so hard to get to know her now.
“You’re sick, aren’t you?”
She looks down and studies her coffee mug. I don’t even need to hear the answer to my question, but she gives it to me anyway. “Yes,” she says. “I am.”
I don’t really know what it is that I’m feeling. Betrayed? Why would I feel betrayed? It’s not like she ever lied to me. I haven’t known her for very long, and all things considered, she’s telling me this pretty much right up front. Sad? Like I just said, I haven’t known her for very long, so how sad can the thought of losing her be? I’ve lived my entire life without her. Still, I feel something that’s keeping me from taking that seat across from her at the kitchen table.
I turn around and go back to the guest room and start to pack, bunching my clothes into balls and jamming them into my bag. I zip it up and toss it onto the desk next to my backpack. The bed hardly needs making because I slept so soundly, but instead of smoothing out the wrinkles, I find myself tearing off the sheets. I throw the pillows across the room. I toss aside the comforter, and it knocks the bedside lamp onto the floor. I’m angry. That’s what I’m feeling. I’m incensed, not insensate. Why does my life always seem to get more and more complicated? It finally felt like I was resolving something. I was healing something. I was letting some light into the darkest part of me.
And now this.
I storm back into the kitchen. Rivka is just where I left her. She looks so tired and sad and so much less beautiful right now, and I lose some of the steam that powered me in here. When I begin to speak I think I’m going to yell, but instead I sound like a prepubescent boy whose voice is just beginning to crack.
“Why did you bother? Why did you want to meet me?”
She opens her mouth as if she’s about to answer, but then she closes it again.
“Don’t you think you’re being selfish?” I ask her. “I understand you might want to tie up loose ends or get some kind of closure or whatever it is people do at times like this, but did you stop and think about what this would be like for me?”
“Of course I did, Simone. You’re all I thought about. Believe me, I wish it weren’t this way. I wish it weren’t now. But I didn’t want you to come to a point in your life when you wanted to know about me and to know about your past and then find that I wasn’t around to give you the answers. Maybe you would never have sought me out—I don’t know. But I didn’t want to take that chance. This is your opportunity, Simone. It’s the only opportunity you will have. And I’m sorry if it came before you’re ready.”
I walk over to the empty chair and sit down. I take a quick check of myself. Betrayed? No. Angry? A little, but I’m having a hard time hanging on to it because I’m not sure who or what to be angry with. Rivka? Fate? God? Modern medicine? Also, you’d be surprised how satisfying it is to knock over a lamp. When all else fails, take your anger out on inanimate objects. Sad? Yes. Look at Rivka. She’s so young, and under that worried expression and the dark circles brought on by a sleepless night, she is vibrant and beautiful. How can she be sick?
“How sick are you?”
“Really sick.”
“Oh.”
As I look at her sitting there, our first conversation on the telephone comes back to me, and I think about how hard I tried to picture her and where she was and what her kitchen looked like, and now here she is, sitting at her kitchen table, probably right where she was sitting when I was on the other end of the phone. The walls are painted a robin’s egg blue. Little potted cactuses line the counter above the sink. I look out the kitchen window and see that her view is to the south, down the long tree-lined country road.
“You were right to push this on me,” I say. “I don’t know when it would have happened exactly, but I’m sure one day I would have come looking for you. I wouldn’t have been able to avoid you forever.”
“I have to confess, Simone, it wasn’t only for your own good. You’re right. I am selfish. I really wanted to get to know you. For me. For my own good. And I’m so glad I did.” She makes a move as if she is about to reach for my hand, but then she seems to change her mind. “Now can we drop all this morbid crap and enjoy a good breakfast? I have a favorite diner I’d love to take you to.”
The diner is called the Briar Patch, and our waitress is this awesome older woman in a pink uniform and crazy blue eye shadow with a name tag that says DOLORES and a voice like Marge Simpson’s. When I order my fried eggs and toast she shouts at me—I mean she really shouts at me—“Any meat,” without an inflection to make it sound like a question, and this gives both Rivka and me the giggles.
The coffee is atrocious and the orange juice is watery and the booth is sticky, but I totally love this place. Everyone in here looks like they eat here every morning at exactly this time sitting in exactly the same spot having exactly the same breakfast.
“Why don’t you have any pictures of them?” I ask. I looked everywhere in her house. I looked on all the walls on every surface in every room. I even snuck a quick look up in Rivka’s bedroom when she was outside getting more firewood. I couldn’t find one picture.
She pauses for a minute and thinks about it.
“Oh. You mean my family. I do have pictures, but I keep them in a drawer. It’s too hard for me to have them out and look at them all the time.”
“Why? What happened?”
“There’s no simple answer to that.”
“I don’t need simple answers.”
“I guess you could say I lost faith. In God, in that way of life, in my father, in everything. And when I needed a change and to find my own way and my own answers, there wasn’t room for me in their lives anymore.”
“None of them? What about your brothers and sisters? What about Hannah?”
