Whenever people weren’t at our house, Mom stayed in her room. Even when we had company, she sometimes excused herself to go back upstairs to the room she used to share with Dad. Anna and I heard her crying behind the closed door. I wanted to tell Mom about the kiss that Dad blew her the morning he died and how he said his kisses always caught up to her. But I was afraid that would just make her sadder.
Gram Elsie said we needed to leave Mom alone. That it would take time for her to feel like herself again. I knew what Gram Elsie meant, because I sure didn’t feel like myself. Neither did Anna. Anna and I stayed together during the entire shivah. I was glad we had each other.
When shivah finally ended, I thought that Gram Elsie and Grandpa Morris would go home. I didn’t know what would happen to us when they left. Our mother couldn’t take care of Anna and me, and we didn’t know how to take care of her. So I was relieved when Gram Elsie said that she and Grandpa Morris would stay for at least another week. “We’ll help hold down the fort,” Gram Elsie said. Grandpa Morris would go back to his office during the day and we would go to school. But Mom wasn’t going back to work yet.
It felt weird to be in school after Dad died. I was sorry that Anna and I weren’t in the same class anymore. Kids started at me. I felt like yelling, “Haven’t you ever seen a kid whose father died?” Then I realized that since I didn’t know any kids my age whose father had died, they probably didn’t, either. At recess I caught up with Anna. She also said she didn’t like being in school.
No one asked us to play at recess. But that was all right because I didn’t feel like playing anyway.
“How was school?” Gram Elsie asked after our first day back.
“Okay,” I answered.
That night, no one came to visit and the five of us ate dinner together in the kitchen. Gram Elsie made Mom’s favorite meat loaf. Grandpa Morris turned on the radio and tuned in a rock station. Suddenly, in the middle of the meal, Mom started to cry again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s the radio.”
I listened. The radio was playing one of Dad’s favorite songs, “Stop in the Name of Love.” Dad was always singing that song when he cooked.
The last words of the song I heard before Gram Elsie switched it off were, “ … before you break my heart.”
My heart is broken, I thought, because I’ll never, ever see my dad again.
After a week, Gram Elsie and Grandpa Morris went back to their own house and Mom went back to work. Anna and I didn’t bother going to our after-school activities anymore. I stopped going to Brownies. I no longer wanted to fly up to Girl Scouts. Anna didn’t go back to her violin lessons. She didn’t play the violin at home, either. “I don’t feel like it,” she said. We never played music on my dad’s stereo like we used to. Anything we would’ve listened to would have reminded us of him.
My friends at school never mentioned anything about my dad, but I knew they felt sorry for me. And after a few days back at school, they started treating me like normal. But I didn’t feel normal.
The days-without-Dad passed along until it was mid-December. Even though our lives were upset and sad without him, Anna and I were looking forward to Hanukkah.
It was a few days before the first night of Hanukkah, and we were getting dressed for school.
“Do you think we should buy a Hanukkah present for Mom?” Anna asked me.
I knew the answer without thinking about it. “No. She wouldn’t want any presents now.”
Anna and I went downstairs and made breakfast while Mom rushed around getting ready for work. Then she left and we walked to the bus stop.
At lunchtime that day, Elvia asked me, “Want to come to my house after school to play soccer? We have enough kids for two teams. It’s really fun.”
I pictured Anna going home to the empty house. I didn’t want her to be alone and I didn’t want to be without her. Besides, I didn’t feel much like playing soccer. “No thanks,” I said. “I have to go right home after school.”
That afternoon, our class rehearsed for the school’s winter holiday show. I hated singing happy holiday songs.
Coming home from school, a bunch of third-graders started singing “Jingle Bells” on the school bus. “If I hear ‘Jingle Bells’ one more time,” I told Anna, “I’ll re-bell.”
Anna laughed. It was the first time I’d heard her laugh since Dad died. It was the first time I’d made a joke since Dad died.
When we came into the empty house, we did what we’d been doing every day since Gram Elsie and Grandpa Morris left. Anna started her homework and I watched soap operas. On the soap opera I watched that afternoon, a man was killed in a car accident. I turned off the TV.
At seven sharp, Mom walked in the door. She looked tired and sad. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” we said back.
She was walking through the kitchen to go up to her room to change.
“What’s for dinner?” I asked.
“There must be some of those frozen meals left,” she said. “I had a big lunch. I’m not hungry. You girls go ahead.”
We never ate frozen dinners before Dad died. My parents were both sensational cooks. Mom went to school to study cooking. She even taught some cooking classes herself. Dad used to say that Mom taught him everything he knew about cooking.
There were only two frozen meals left in the freezer. Anna took the turkey pot pie and I took the three-course baked chicken dinner. We popped them in the microwave, set the timer, and waited for it to ding.
We were eating when Mom came into the kitchen. She was wearing Dad’s bathrobe again. I hated when she wore that. While we finished our so-called dinner, she put water on for tea and took out some crackers and peanut butter for herself.
I put my empty frozen food tray on top of the overflowing wastebasket. It fell off, so I stuck it in the sink with the unwashed breakfast dishes. I thought, I should put those dishes in the dishwasher. I opened the dishwasher to find that it was already full of dirty dishes. I reached under the sink for dishwasher powder. There wasn’t any. I closed the dishwasher and sat down again.
Mom opened the peanut butter jar and peered inside. “This is empty,” she said.
“There wasn’t any cereal this morning,” I told her. “So we had peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast.” I remembered how stale the bread had tasted.
I looked around the kitchen. It was a mess. We were a mess. I could feel that Anna was thinking the same thing. It was as if we’d lost both of our parents. Our mother had to start to take control or we’d be lost too.
I stuck out a foot. “Mom,” I said. “I don’t have any clean socks for school. I’ve worn these three days in a row.”
Mom was a stickler for clean underwear and socks. I figured she’d react to that.
“We’ll go shopping this weekend,” she said, “and buy some food and clothes.”
“You mean we’re never going to wash our clothes again?” I asked. “We’re just going to keep buying new ones?”
“Disposable clothes,” Anna mumbled. “That’s disgusting.”
I remembered how hard my father worked to save the environment. He had taught us from an early age that it was important not to waste things.
“Mom, what would Dad have said if he knew we were going to buy underwear because our old ones were dirty?” I asked.
Mom recoiled as if I had hit her. She never mentioned Dad to us. And we’d been careful not to talk about him in front of her. But I couldn’t stop. “Dad would have hated the way things are around here,” I said.
I pictured what my dad would have done if he saw the kitchen the way it was. He’d say, “Let’s pull this place together. Let’s make it shine.” Then he’d assign us tasks, put on some soul music, and we’d sing and dance while we did dishes, wiped counters, and swept the floor.
“We have to pull this thing together,” I told my mother. “Let’s make it shine.”
Mom folded her arms and stared at me with big, sad eyes. she knew that I was
imitating Dad. Finally she spoke. “I know I have to pull myself together,” she whispered. “I’m trying.”
Anna and I didn’t say anything. We waited to see what Mom would say next.
“I guess you two don’t have time to keep the house organized because of all of your after-school activities,” she said.
“We don’t do after-school stuff anymore,” I said.
Mom looked surprised. “You don’t?”
“Not since Da — not for awhile,” Anna told her.
“What about your violin lessons, Anna?” she asked.
Anna shook her head. “I don’t want to play anymore.”
“We come right home after school,” I said. “But we ran out of dishwasher soap and lots of other stuff.”
“We don’t know how to use the washer and dryer,” said Anna. “We never did it before.”
“I’m sorry,” Mom said in a hushed voice. Then she sat up a little straighter and took a long sip of tea. Finally, she spoke. “Anna, find me a pad and pencil. Abby, walk around the kitchen and help me figure out what we’re out of. We’ll make a list.” Once again, she was taking charge.
I told Mom all the stuff we needed to buy at the supermarket.
“Tomorrow,” she said, “we’ll go grocery shopping. Then I’m going to find someone who can be here when you girls come home from school. Someone who can cook your dinner and do some of the cleaning up. You won’t have to do kitchen chores, but I’m going to teach you both how to do your own wash, okay?”
Anna and I nodded.
“I want you to start your violin lessons again next week, Anna. And back to practicing at least half an hour a day. Do you understand?”
Anna nodded.
Mom pointed at me. “And you, young lady, have you been watching television after school?”
I nodded.
“No television on weekdays. That’s always been the rule in this house.”
Even though Mom was scolding me, I smiled. I was so happy to have my take-charge mom back. “Aren’t you jumping up from Brownies to Girl Scouts soon?” she asked.
“It’s not ‘jumping up,’ Mom,” I said with a little laugh. “It’s called ‘flying up.’ But I dropped out of Brownies.”
“Flying up? Well, sprout some wings fast, Abby. I want you back at your Brownie meetings and I want you to become a Girl Scout.”
Anna and I exchanged a small smile.
Mom stood up. “Anna, why don’t you go tune your violin? You don’t want to be rusty for your lesson. Abby, go get your homework and come back here with it.”
A few minutes later, I was sitting at the kitchen table doing my homework. Mom was cleaning the kitchen and Anna was upstairs tuning her violin. As she was clearing the table, Mom took a bite of Anna’s unfinished turkey pot pie. “This is disgusting,” she said. “I’ll make sure to find a housekeeper who knows how to cook.”
Anna started playing a song. After the first few notes, I recognized it — “Jingle Bells.” Mom made a kind of choking laugh and gave me a crooked smile. It wasn’t my old mom, but it was sure better than no mom at all.
Mom became more of a workaholic than ever. That fall she was promoted to a bigger, better, and more time-consuming job at her publishing company in New York. I think she was keeping herself busy so she wouldn’t miss Dad so much.
Anna spent even more time with her violin than she did before Dad died. If she didn’t have a violin lesson after school, then she spent time practicing. And if she wasn’t practicing, she was doing her homework at the library with her best friend, Terry.
And me? I became more and more involved in sports. I played on a soccer team and a softball team and I took tennis lessons. We had a housekeeper — Mrs. Russell — who was at our house from three o’clock until Mom came home around seven. Mrs. R. was usually alone in the house, cleaning or cooking our dinner. She was a great cook, but she wasn’t there on weekends. Since Mom didn’t like to cook anymore, on Saturdays and Sundays we mostly ate deli or Chinese takeout, or we went to a restaurant.
One Sunday in late November, I left the house before Anna and Mom were even up. After a morning of tennis, I ate lunch at Elvia’s. We spent the rest of the day playing soccer and hanging out with the kids on her block.
Around six-thirty I came home to a dark, empty house. I didn’t know where my sister and mother were or what they had been doing all day. But that wasn’t unusual.
I turned on the kitchen light. There was a note stuck to the refrigerator door.
I was glad Mom was coming home soon and wondered what we were having for dinner.
The phone rang. It was my mother on her car phone. “I’m on Route six-eighty-four,” she said, “and I’m starving.”
“Me too,” I told her.
“Why don’t you order Chinese,” she suggested, “and I’ll pick it up on the way home.”
“What should I order?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” my mother answered. “Whatever you want is fine with me.”
As soon as I hung up the phone, it rang again. This time it was Anna, looking for Mom. I explained that Mom was on her way home and that I was about to order Chinese takeout. “What should I order besides sesame noodles?” I asked.
“Terry’s mother just invited me to dinner,” Anna said.
I could hear Terry’s sister and brother laughing and talking in the background. Terry comes from a big family (the kind I envied), with a mother, a father, and a bunch of kids. I knew Anna loved to hang out there just the way I liked to hang out at Elvia’s house.
“I’ll tell Mom,” I said. “She won’t mind.”
I ordered steamed dumplings, sesame noodles, and chicken with snow peas for Mom and me. Then I set the table with two plates and chopsticks. The house was so quiet it gave me the creeps. I was disappointed that Anna wasn’t going to be home for dinner. I turned on the TV and found a sports channel with a soccer match.
Mom came in through the kitchen and poked her head into the living room. “Turn that down for a minute, will you? I have to call Steve.” Steve was Mom’s assistant at work.
I watched a little more of the soccer match, but my stomach kept grumbling, “Feed me.” I went into the kitchen. Mom was still on the phone and eating sesame noodles right out of the carton. She gave me a weak smile and mouthed, “I’m going to be on this call for awhile. You go ahead and eat.”
I took the sesame noodles from Mom and made us each a plate with half of everything. I gave her a plate and took mine back to the soccer game.
I had finished eating when Mom passed behind me on her way upstairs. “I have to edit a manuscript tonight,” she said. “Did you do your homework?”
Of course I hadn’t. I turned off the TV and went upstairs to face the homework I’d been putting off all weekend. I had just settled down to it when Anna came in. “Hey, Abby,” she said. “Mom said to come downstairs.”
I figured Mom was going to get mad at me for not cleaning up after our dinner, and I was annoyed. I had ordered the food and put it out. Couldn’t she throw away a couple of cartons and put two dishes in the dishwasher without making a big deal out of it?
Mom was waiting for us at the table. I was surprised to see that the empty food cartons had been thrown away and the dishes were already in the dishwasher. “What’s up?” I asked.
“Have a seat,” she answered.
“Don’t mind if I do,” I said. I picked up the chair and headed out of the room with it. That got a laugh from Mom and Anna. I brought the chair back to the table and sat down in it. Mom looked from one of us to the other. “I haven’t talked to either of you in days,” she said. “I just wanted to catch up.”
Just then, the phone rang. It was a business call for Mom.
The fortune cookies that came with our Chinese food lay side by side in the middle of the table. I took one and handed the other to Anna. We each opened a cookie and read our own fortunes, then one another’s.
Ten minutes later, Mom was still on the ph
one. Anna and I gave up and went back upstairs to our room.
Anna flopped across her bed. “Maybe we’ll see Mom more during the holidays,” she said.
“I doubt it,” I grumbled. “It’s going to be more of the same.” I grabbed my notebook and held it under my arm the way Mom held the manuscripts she edited. “I know it’s a holiday, girls,” I said in a crisp voice that mimicked Mom’s. “But I’ll be going into the office for a few hours. I get so much more work done when no one else is there.” I checked the time on my watch. “Have to run or I’ll miss that train.”
Instead of laughing, Anna looked horrified.
I turned to see Mom standing in the doorway. She gave me a weak smile, so I knew she wasn’t angry at me. Then she sat down on my bed. “I — we — need a vacation,” she said. “I’ve been thinking we should go away together during the holidays. I’ll take off the ten days that you two have off from school.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. A vacation! When Dad was alive we went on camping trips every summer. We’d even been to Disney World as a family. And just a few weeks before Dad died, we took a four-day driving trip to see the fall foliage in Vermont. But we hadn’t had a family vacation since then. I figured we never would.
Mom unfolded a map and laid it out in front of us.
“Florida!” Anna exclaimed.
“Are we gong to Orlando?” I asked. “This time let’s go to Epcot Center!”
“We’re not going to Orlando,” she said. “We’re going someplace quiet. A place where I can rest and be alone with you two.”
I studied the map. “Are we going to Miami Beach?” I asked. “A kid in my class visits his grandparents there. He said it’s really nice.”
Mom shook her head no. She pointed to a tiny green island off the west coast of Florida. “We’re going to this island. One of my authors went there last winter and said it would be perfect for the three of us,” she said. “I’ll make reservations tomorrow.”