Then she was even younger and helping Mama pluck the chicken from the kosher butcher’s. They were plucking the feathers, and what did they do with them? They saved them till Mama and Aunt Hannah made feather dusters they sold at the Sunday market. Nothing went to waste in that house, not a scrap of vegetable peeling, not a bone, not a bit of fat. Everything was used. Not like the piles of trash that went out of Suzanne’s every day, mountains of garbage, things tossed out. No, they used every tiny scrap.
Then they did not throw away people, not her weird Grandpa who had a head injury from a pogrom in Lithuania and could only do rote tasks. Not Aunt Hannah who woke everyone in the house with her screaming at least one night a week, nightmares from the Nazis. Sometimes a hungry neighbor or a cousin passing through or someone in some kind of trouble joined the meal. She could smell that soup. She had not remembered it in years. It was a soup that belonged to the days a chicken had feathers and feet instead of parts wrapped in plastic film. Kids like Rachel were turning into vegetarians because it came as a shock to them that all those objects that came so neatly from the supermarket were not Disney creatures marching with a dance step into their pots, but real animals who had died to feed them. She had never been kept in the dark about that, you ate to live, so she accepted it. People over-protected kids nowadays, so they grew up inept and unable to deal with adversity. That was a subject she felt strongly about, and she opened her mouth to speak to the old guy snoozing beside her as the TV played some stupid sitcom about twenty-year-olds with no politics and no sense trying to decide who to fall into bed with. Then she realized she could no more make the speech about child raising than he could understand it.
The scent of that soup tickled her nostrils. She could smell it more clearly than she had smelled anything since her stroke. It was a rich smell, luscious. Perhaps she had never eaten anything so good since. She could taste it. Her mouth was filling with saliva. She could feel the hard wooden seat with its center ridge pressing into her buttocks and she could feel the rough cotton of the white Shabbat cloth under her elbows. Yes, Zeydeh was bent over his bowl of soup, nose almost in it, and Davey was imitating him and poking her in the ribs. She could smell the fragrance of the challah fresh from the oven. Broken open, its yellow softness revealed itself under the glaze of the surface. It was almost more cake than bread. It melted in her mouth. Why hadn’t she bought herself challah in recent years? A bakery in the next block to her apartment made perfectly good challah. Mama roasted two chickens so everybody could have two pieces. She always got a wing and a back. The boys got the legs. Mama, Papa, and Zeydeh split the breasts, and Papa got the other leg. Aunt Hannah, Karla, and she divided up the rest. She remembered how when she had left home and was making money as an organizer for the ILGWU, she ordered half a chicken in a restaurant and she ate the whole thing, every bit of it. She could taste that too. It wasn’t like Mama’s, which was a kind of chicken pot roast with celery and carrots and onions and garlic. Karla knew how to make it. No, this restaurant chicken was roasted like the goyim made but very good. She ate it all down to the last bit of skin and sucked on the bones, picking up the bones in her hands, not like a lady. She could taste her mother’s chicken in her mouth and at the same time she could taste that roast chicken in the restaurant, from her first union paycheck.
Tears trickled from her left eye, her good eye down her cheek, leaving trails of salt. How could she ever have imagined she would be reduced to sitting in a dimly lit room in front of the TV no one was watching with a bunch of old people nobody cared about—including each other—and crying about vanished chickens? I’ve had my life, damn it, she thought, I’ve had my life. It was a damned good life, even when I was scared, even when I was in danger, even when I was crying my heart out. Why can’t it just be over? I don’t regret it, but for this empty epilogue. I had as much living as anybody could ask for, so let me out of here. Let my body go!
16
Suzanne
“Are you sure you’re not rushing into marriage because you’re nervous about going to Israel by yourself? You’ve never been out of the country alone. You’ve always been with me or with your father.”
“Really, Mother, I’m looking forward to Israel, I’m tremendously excited about going. I’ve traveled by myself.” Rachel was using the ultra-reasonable tone of voice Suzanne had often heard her use with Elena. “When I was thinking of going to school in California, I went out there alone. I went to Santa Fe with a friend. You’re just upset because I want to get married during my year there.”
“But how long have you known him? Michael.” She made herself say his name. She did not like the way they doted. She did not trust doting. She did not like his vaguely superior air, the sense she had of him judging them.
“I’ve known him since my first year in rabbinical college. We were in Hebrew Ulam together. We started studying together that first year.” Rachel put down the underwear she was sorting—what was to be taken with her, what was to be put away. “Really, Mother, what have you got against him? What more suitable husband am I ever likely to meet?”
“I like him,” she said defensively. “I like him fine. I just think marriage is something you should wait till you’re done with school before you rush into.”
“Who’s rushing, Mother? We’ve been talking about it for months and months.”
But not to me, Suzanne thought sourly. When did you stop telling me?
Suzanne was putting away the woolens Rachel had brought home. It always moved Suzanne to handle her daughter’s clothing. She was sorting the things that needed to go to the cleaners from those that could go into old suitcases in the basement at once. A few smelled of the simple light floral perfumes Rachel liked. Others simply smelled of her daughter, a particular scent she could not have named but would have recognized anyplace. She buried her face in a blue woolen turtleneck, and for a moment she felt like crying. Menopause, Marta would say. Marta blamed all moods on menopause, as if the world wasn’t knobby with problems and irritants. Rachel’s body scent was a clean gingery bready smell. Flesh of her flesh. This morning she had heard Jim and Marta fighting upstairs. Marta had a low flash point, a temper that sometimes caused her to break things she had no desire to break. Jim was slower to anger but far, far slower to forgive; and he never forgot.
She remembered when the girls had been small, how much their little clothes had pleased her, like the clothes made for dolls. Rachel had been a plump baby, good-natured, easily moved to giggles or tears. When she was older, she liked to color. She used to get so excited when she saw the ducks in the Public Gardens, the swans. She loved the swan boats. Elena had never been interested in them. She liked rides better.
Rachel had loved stories about animals, heroic dogs, wise or foolish cats, mistreated horses, mischievous goats. Elena had been more musical. She had responded to music from the time she was a baby. At one time, Suzanne had imagined that Elena would be a musician. Or a dancer. Even in financially difficult days, Suzanne had managed ballet lessons for Elena. She could remember her flickering across the stage like a dark flame. She had always been lovely. She was one of the only women Suzanne had ever known who woke up pretty. Sleep seemed to lie on her lightly and never to rumple her excessively. Yet she slept profoundly. When Elena was an infant and then a toddler, sometimes her stillness in sleep frightened Suzanne. Elena would sink into sleep and lie in it as if on the bottom of a pool. More than once, Suzanne had wakened her out of fear that something was wrong, fear that her baby had died.
She had been a far more anxious mother with Elena than with Rachel. By the time Rachel was born, she had Sam and Marta to help. She had some experience. But when Elena was born, she realized she had never held a baby in her life. She ran out and bought Dr. Spock and every other book she could see that might serve as manuals. The more she read, the more things seemed able to go wrong. Sudden infant death syndrome. Colic. Meningitis. Choking. Smothering. Being dropped on the head. Some nights she had sat and wept, overwh
elmed with the responsibility, overwhelmed with fear. Sometimes she felt as if Elena were not a baby but huge, bigger than she. Then she would feel guilty. Motherhood had not been joyous the first time. She had felt inadequate. She was finishing law school, she was on the Law Review, she was studying hours every night while holding the crying Elena on one arm. She wondered why she had not gone mad. Perhaps she had. No, she had survived and so had Elena, but when Elena got into trouble, Suzanne had been sure it was her fault, her failure as a mother.
“I think it would be good for you to be on the board,” Jake said, dipping bread into sauce from the pot roast. “I know it would be good for the board.”
“But I’m overextended as it is. I’m teaching, I’m practicing law, I’m still involved in the clinic, I’m mentoring several students, I’m trying to finish an article on appeals in battered women syndrome cases…”
“The board will meet only once or twice a month. You could manage that. An evening now and then.”
“But you don’t want me just as a warm body at meetings. Do you?” She wished she did not have a tiny suspicion that one of the reasons he was attracted to her was because he wanted to recruit her legal talent for his organization. Gratis, of course, legitimate pro bono work, if she had the time. But she had that little suspicion, and she did not enjoy it.
“You’re a crack litigator, Suzanne. We could use any help you could give us. We’re always in court. We’re always suing some lumber company or power megalith, or they’re suing us, or both.”
“Just when did you think of asking me? How long have you had that in mind?”
They looked at each other in a heavy silence. Between them lay the half-eaten meal and the question she did not quite ask, but which he understood.
“It’s an obvious idea, Suzanne. I’m not at all sure it was my idea originally. I imagine when I mentioned meeting you, one of my directors made the suggestion.”
She decided to ignore the messier possibilities for the moment. “I have no idea how much time and effort my mother is going to take. For the moment, she’s in a good rehab center. But that’s temporary. She’s going to need lots of help. I don’t understand what’s involved, frankly, except that I suspect it’s a lot more than I can imagine.”
“Well, how about you go on the board and we put off asking you for anything more until you have your mother settled?”
“How about you give me some time to see what having my mother in my home entails?” It was always easier to maintain a relationship in two busy lives when at least part of those working lives intersected. However, she felt too overextended to agree to anything. “Right now I wouldn’t baby-sit a friend’s goldfish for a weekend. I’m pulled out of shape.”
“It would be good for you to get involved. I know you’d find it more interesting than you can guess.”
“I just need some time without any more new demands.”
“I can wait.” He grinned at her.
Why did that make her so uncomfortable?
17
Twelve Years Earlier
Elena
Elena was annoyed the guys were hogging the driving. Ever since Chad had taught her, she loved to drive. Her mother saw no reason for her to start driving at what she called below the age of reason, but Chad had brought her in for her learner’s permit. The guys would tire eventually and let her take over. They had borrowed Chad’s father’s BMW, which was hardly inconspicuous but made good time on the night interstate west. They had left in the morning at the time they were all supposed to be going to school, to give them a full day’s head start before any of them were missed. Now it was 1:30 A.M., and they were just crossing from Ohio into Indiana with Judas Priest shouting that song they kept playing over and over, “Rock Hard, Ride Free.”
She wakened curled in the backseat to find that Chad was checking them into a motel. They all fell into the bed and more or less slept until it got noisy in the morning. Then they all took turns in the shower and Chad shaved.
“How come you aren’t shaving?” she asked Evan.
“I’m going to grow a beard. Great disguise. I look older with five o’clock shadow.”
She made a disgusted grimace. “Just don’t expect me to kiss you!”
He grabbed her and rubbed his cheek against hers. “Kiss, kiss, kiss.”
They were both giggling as they fell on the bed. Chad came in whistling. “Leave you guys alone for five minutes, and you’re at it. In permanent heat, that’s what you are.”
Elena said, “I think we should all do something to change our appearance.”
Chad shrugged. “Who’s looking for three kids? Runaways are a dime a dozen.”
“Your father’s going to want his car back.”
Chad waved that away with an airy gesture. “We’ll have to ditch it at some point and get another.”
“Oh, sure. We can trade,” Evan said. “Hi, want to trade your old Ford Escort for a nice BMW, no questions asked?”
“For the time being, let’s get as far as we can in it.”
“I’ve never been to California,” Elena said, curled up again in the backseat with a bag of potato chips that would do for breakfast.
“I have,” Chad repeated. “We lived in Sacramento for two years when my parents were still together. Mom and I used to go for picnics on the American River. My mom taught me how to paddle a canoe. We would pretend to be Indians.”
“Your mother used to, like, play with you?” Evan asked in surprise.
“Yeah. She had a wild imagination. We always played together. Now I’ll never see her again, ever.”
“That’s silly,” Elena said. “She wouldn’t tell your dad where you are. She wouldn’t rat on you.”
Chad didn’t answer. Elena tried to imagine her mother playing with her. Actually she remembered Suzanne crawling around the floor with her when she was little. They were bears under the dining-room table. She could hardly believe Suzanne had done that. Growled and eaten berries. Yes, they had eaten blueberries out of their hands under the table, her mother’s face stained with purple. In the memory, Suzanne was young and almost radiant. She remembered the same table as a tent and her mother and herself under it—were they Indians? Bedouins? That was fun. They ate under the table from a can of tuna fish. The cat Big Boy had come and eaten some of it too and made Elena giggle. Big Boy was a huge brown tabby from the street who slept with Elena, always, his big grizzled head on her thigh. She wondered if he was missing her. He was an old cat now and set in his ways. Would he start sleeping in Rachel’s bed? Would he cry for her, looking around the house and in the closets? She felt almost angry at these long buried memories of childhood. How could Suzanne have been that way and now be the way she was? Now she never understood a thing but kept pushing Elena to be somebody else, an older version of the perfect Rachel. Her mother just did not love her. She was trying to train her like a recalcitrant dog.
After weeks of making idle plans for running away together, Elena herself precipitated their leaving. She received a midsemester grade of D in physics, which she had taken just to avoid chemistry and its bad smells. Physics seemed cleaner. But she hated it. Everything had to be so diddly-shit precise. She had expected it to be exciting, like time and space and warp engines and stars exploding. But it was all boring. It was measuring things nobody needed to measure, displacements, specific gravities. All this crap was because her mother insisted Elena go to college, which was pointless. It was pointless like school and adulthood and every meaningless thing people filled their time with: 6:45 watch the news; 7:30 get married; 8:05 talk to investment broker; 9:00 watch TV. They would all be dead soon, like some terrorist would set off the big one and they would combust or else die hideously with awful sores and their hair falling out. Or some other terrorist would drop a plague virus in the reservoir. There was nothing to look forward to anyhow except growing up and getting a boring job and paying taxes and having babies you could force to act the way you wanted them to, so they too would gr
ow up doing what they found just as boring as you had. As Chad was always saying, it was better to give them the slip. Head out. Get off the bus. If you followed their plan, all you got every day was older.
But she knew her mother was just going to kill her for getting the D. As if it mattered. She could hear it already, the speeches about living up to her potential, the speeches about how important it was for a girl to do as well as she possibly could—like she was some kind of super Girl Scout leading a charge of females up a hill against a guard of macho men. Her best friends were boys. Her mother didn’t understand guys. She was always going on about discrimination and quotas and affirmative action and self-esteem. Elena’s self-esteem was just fine. She didn’t need some stupid grade in a class she hated to prop it up. Her mother didn’t care about her anyhow, only about performance. Suzanne just couldn’t endure to wait until Elena grew up. She wanted her to act a certain way, to dress a certain way. The first time Suzanne saw her new bathing suit, she was ripshit. “You have to shave your pubic hair to wear that.”