"She"s at a dance cla.s.s."
I am incredulous. "Not only is it nine-thirty at night, my mother is bed-bound."
"Not anymore."
"Really," I say, genuinely surprised.
"Yes. It"s a combination of factors. One, we got a new therapist, and your mother has taken a shine to her, and so we put her in a wheelchair and brought her down the hall; and then a young doctor has been with us doing some research, and your mother elected to partic.i.p.ate in a study, so we"re giving her a new c.o.c.ktail, and while she"s not exactly flying around, she"s doing much better."
"Is she walking?"
"Crawling," the nurse says, with pleasure. "She"s down on the floor, crawling everywhere, and seems to be loving it. We have to be careful not to trip over her...and I"ve put some of my son"s hockey pads on her knees and elbows. I can send you a photo if you like?"
She e-mails me a photo and, sure enough, it"s Mom, on the floor, crawling down the hall, like a crab scurrying.
I call Lillian, my father"s youngest sister, and she grudgingly agrees to allow me to visit her.
"Is there anything I can bring you?"
"Some borscht from that place on Second Avenue."
I don"t tell her that I"m an hour and fifteen minutes from Second Avenue. "How much do you want?" I ask.
"One of the large," she says. "Actually, make it two-I"ll put one in the freezer."
"Anything else?"
"Well, if you"re going, just get me whatever else looks good."
My mother phones back. "The woman at the reservation desk helped me make the call," she says. "She told me you were hunting me down."
"I called to say h.e.l.lo and she told me you were at a dance cla.s.s-is everything okay?"
"Everything is great, I"m getting my moves back," she says.
"I"m going to go visit Lillian," I say, and before I can explain she cuts me off.
"Is she not well?" my mother asks, filled with concern.
"I just want to see her. I have some questions."
"Yeah, well, I have a question or two as well," my mother says, snapping back to her usual self. "Where are my pearl earrings? And the matching bracelet that your grandmother gave me, which Lillian borrowed to wear to a party, and then decided it all belonged to her?"
"I can certainly ask her about the jewelry," I say.
"Don"t ask," my mother says. "Just do what she did, go into her jewelry box and take it. Then tell her later, when you"re safe at home."
"I"ll see what I can find out."
"And while you"re looking, see if there"s a little necklace with a ruby in the center and some diamonds-I never can remember if I lost that one or if your father hocked it to go to the track."
"Did Dad do things like that?"
"All men do things like that," she says.
Nervous about driving since the stroke, I call the driver who took us to Jane"s funeral and ask if he"d be willing to take me to Lillian"s, wait, and then bring me home. He tells me it"s what"s called a "time job," seventy-five bucks an hour, four-hour minimum-I sign him up. He picks me up right on time; we swing by the 2nd Avenue Deli, which is now no longer on Second Avenue, and head out to Lillian"s on Long Island. I have the guy park a couple of houses away, hoping to avoid having to discuss my circ.u.mstances with Lillian.
Walking slowly up her driveway, I have flashbacks to summer birthday parties, Fourth of July sparklers, hot dogs. The houses on her street used to be uniform, split-level brick, every house the same, distinguished only by what year Pontiac or Buick was parked in the driveway. The houses now are b.a.s.t.a.r.dized versions of their former selves. Some have had additions, renovations, making them look like they grew room-sized tumors; others were leveled to make room for postmodernist steroid monsters. Double-height living rooms and grand entry parlors have replaced the beloved bay windows that gave every home of the 1950s and "60s a unique fishbowl effect. I unpack the groceries at Lillian"s kitchen table, wondering, could the ancient, almost crispy oil-cloth table covering be the same one she"s had for thirty years? Lillian puts things away like a scurrying mouse. She"s tiny, maybe four feet tall, and shrinking fast.
"What happened to you?" she asks. "You"re all banged up."
"Car accident," I say. I can"t bring myself to tell her about the stroke; it makes me feel old. "Beautiful flowers," I say, nodding towards the vase on the table.
"I"ve had them for years," she says. "They"re plastic; I wash them once a week with Ivory. This you should keep." She hands me back a container of kasha. "I won"t eat it. This too," she says. "Can"t have poppy seeds, no seeds, nuts, or small kernels-that means no popcorn at the movies, no pistachios. I"ve got trouble with my gut."
The way she says it, I"m tempted to make some crack about "hardly makes life worth living," but, given my recent experiences with how precarious life is, it"s starting to seem like something I shouldn"t joke about.
"Your brother should be ashamed," she says.
"Yes," I say.
"Is he?"
"No. I don"t think so."
We sit at her dining-room table. She makes me a cup of tea, Lipton, strong and incredibly good. "Do you take sugar or do you want Splender?"
"Sugar is fine," I say. It"s sugar that"s been in the bowl so long it"s lumpy, sugar that many generations of wet spoons have touched, celebratory sugar, infected sugar-old sugar. Lillian comes out of the kitchen carrying an artifact, the blue metal tin marked Danish b.u.t.ter Cookies that if I didn"t know better I would swear had been in the family for generations-when the Jews left Egypt, they took with them the tins of Danish b.u.t.ter Cookies. And tins, which as best I could tell never included Danish b.u.t.ter Cookies, traveled from house to house, but always, always, found their way back to Lillian. In every family or tribe there is a keeper of the tin, whose job it is to intone annoyingly, "Don"t forget my tin," or "How could you forget my tin? No more for you. I don"t bake without the tin. What"s the point, the cookies will rot."
Aunt Lillian"s long, thin gnarled fingers twist and turn the thin metal top; the contents knock around inside-trapped. Lillian"s hands are leopard-spotted with age; her fine-gauge hair, dyed a deep unnatural red, is fixed high on her head like rusted steel wool.
She finally gets the tin open; there are only about ten cookies left. "I don"t bake as much as I used to," she says.
I take one, bite into it: hard as a rock, like Jewish biscotti. "Good," I say, with my mouth full.
"The last time I saw you was at your father"s funeral," she says.
I dip the cookie into my tea; the second bite is better. I finish the cookie, and when I move to take another, Lillian yanks the tin away from me and puts the top back on. "I have to ration them," she says. "I don"t bake often; in fact, this may be the last batch ever."
"Tell me about my father," I ask, and it"s as though, after exhaling the word "father," on the next breath I inhale the look and smell of him, five suits hanging in the closet after he died, his hair tonic some kind of oily, spicy-scented stuff that he splashed on his hands, ran through his hair, and combed back. It left stains my mother called "fat" on the pillowcases, the sofa, the living-room chairs, anywhere he rested his head.
"Middle management," Aunt Lillian blurts, "that"s all he ever was. There was always someone above him who he hated, and someone below that he took it out on. He sold insurance. He worked the congregation temple. Then, later, he went into investments. If you ever questioned something your father did he"d explode-he managed to do things his way by making everyone afraid."
I nod. What she"s saying fits with my own, dimmer recollection.
She goes on: "Now, my husband, he didn"t like the family, felt they were too judgmental and undereducated. And he was right. Your father would argue with Morty and wouldn"t give up until Morty crumbled-didn"t matter if he was right or wrong."
I shake my head.
"And then Morty was gone. I never said it, but to a large degree I blame your father for that," she says with a sound of disgust, a kind of sputtering spit, as though she"s revealed a deeply held secret. "Your father was like that, always needed all of the attention and acted like a child if he didn"t get it. That"s why he and your brother never got along-they were the same. And you," she says, wagging a gnarled finger at me, "you stood there like a little r.e.t.a.r.d."
I say nothing-as far as I can remember, no one"s ever referred to me as a "little r.e.t.a.r.d."
"Was there something specific that happened, a reason that we stopped seeing your family?" I ask, jotting down the comment about my being a r.e.t.a.r.d in the margin of the legal pad I"m using to write notes on.
"I had a falling out with your mother."
"My mother?"
"I know what you"re thinking-she was the one who was easy to get along with-but she picked up a trick or two from your father."
"What was the falling out about?"
"Matzoh b.a.l.l.s."
I glance up to see if she"s kidding. Lillian looks at me as if to say, Isn"t it obvious?
"A matzoh-ball war," she says. "Do you make them in the soup or separately? What is the ideal consistency, fluffy or chewy?"
I look at her, waiting for more, waiting for the answer. "Your mother seemed to think whatever her answer was had to be the right answer and also meant she was a better Jew. And, frankly, between that and your father, I couldn"t be bothered to stay in touch. Just because we don"t talk to you doesn"t mean we don"t talk amongst ourselves."
I"m about to ask who from the family is still alive when she abruptly cuts me off.
"And then there was the incident with you kids in the recreation room." Again she gives me the look. "Are you playing dumb or are you actually dumb?"
Not knowing what she"s talking about, I decline to answer.
"Your brother performed surgery on my son," she says, as though offering me a clue, a little something to jog my memory.
"What kind of surgery?"
"He recirc.u.mcised him, using a compa.s.s and a protractor and Elmer"s glue."
I vaguely remember something. It was one of the Jewish holidays, and all of the children were downstairs playing. I have a thirty-watt memory of being down on the floor, on the rug with the cousins, and there being an intense Monopoly game going on with some off-site buying and selling of property and hotels, and while we were playing, my brother and my cousin Jason were doing something at my father"s desk that seemed strange. I remember thinking how like George it was, getting someone to do something they shouldn"t for his pleasure. The recreation room was part playroom, part office, with the office area blocked off by file cabinets and white s.h.a.g carpeting, so it wasn"t like I could actually see what he was doing, but I knew it was weird.
"Was Jason all right?"
"Yes, there was very little physical damage-a small cut, a lot of blood, and a visit to a plastic surgeon-but now he"s gay."
"Are you saying that George made Jason gay?"
"Something did-I don"t think you"re born gay, do you? Something happens, a trauma that turns you that way."
"Aunt Lillian, there are lots of gay people who would say that"s the way they came, and in fact some theories about intrauterine hormonal levels..." I go on, wondering how I even know this; must have been an article I read. Whatever I"m saying is clearly irrelevant to what Lillian believes. "What did my parents say about the incident?"
"I never told them. Jason swore me to secrecy; he was so humiliated," she says. "George only stopped because someone went downstairs to check on you kids."
"Who came down?"
"Aunt Florence."
"And what did she see?"
"She saw nothing, but it frightened George and he stopped."
"And what did your husband say?"
"He wasn"t there," she says, "which only made matters worse."
"Where was he?"
"Good question," she says, and says no more. "There was no excuse," she says.
"None," I say.
"The last time I saw you was at your father"s funeral," she repeats her line from earlier.
"Can you help me with something?" I pull out the family tree. "We need to fill this out."
"Fill out a family tree-are you going to pay me for my time? Should I be compensated in some way?"
"I brought you borscht," I say. She makes a dismissive gesture and moves her chair closer to mine, so she can see the forms and my yellow legal pad of notes.
"How old are you, Aunt Lillian?"
"Older than I look; I"m eighty-eight but am told I pa.s.s for mid-seventies."
Together we fill out the family tree. At one point she brings over a couple of old family photo alb.u.ms, the physical evidence, and goes from page to page, spilling the beans about everyone. "Your father had a lot of issues about masculinity."
"Are you saying you think he was a closet case?"
She lifts her shoulders and makes a face. "Who knows what anyone is or isn"t."
"Were there any criminals in the family?" I ask.
"Oh sure," she says. "Plenty. There was Uncle Bernie, who got stabbed to death in a card game."
"By who?"
"No one ever wanted to say."
"And what happened to Aunt Bea?"
"Dead," she says. "And you know she had three children, none of them ever lived to be more than four years old; they called it crib death, but your mother and I weren"t so sure-we never left any of you alone with her."
"Really, that seems unlikely; Jews don"t kill their children, just drive them crazy."
"Trouble runs in the family," she says.