A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life (13 page)

This is terrible. It is wrong. And what I’m about to say is shameful, but it’s true: I can’t stop thinking that I’m going to get cancer too. I’m going to get cancer because Rivka is my mother and I’m her daughter and isn’t this kind of thing hereditary? I have Rivka’s eyes. I have her voice. She’s left-handed. We both have sensitive skin. It turns out we’re both allergic to walnuts. Am I going to get ovarian cancer?

Then there’s the matter of Hannah. Rivka said she died five years ago. Hannah was not an old woman five years ago. But Mom tells me that Hannah died of a brain aneurysm, not ovarian cancer. I’m not really sure if this information is supposed to soothe me or to make me worry that I could die of a brain aneurysm
or
ovarian cancer, whichever finds me first.

Mom has done quite a bit of research on both and tells me that even though I’m at a higher risk of getting ovarian cancer or having a brain aneurysm than your average person, the odds are still extremely low.

I can’t help but think about the benefits to my life before. The benefits of knowing nothing. The benefits of having a bare, solitary trunk for a family tree rather than a tree that is growing more leaves and limbs day by day.

SIXTEEN

The weather outside is frightful. And if Dad had listened to Mom and called the guy to come fix our flue instead of trying to do it himself, we would have a fire that would be so delightful. But Dad is stubborn, and we’re relying on our oil burner in the basement to keep the house warm. Rivka made it here just in time. Only about ten minutes after she parked her car behind the Subaru in the driveway, the snow started coming down hard, in sheets of fast-moving white confetti. The house smells of goose. I’m sure you have no idea what goose smells like, and I hate to rely on a cliché, but it smells just like chicken.

I have to make a confession. I’ve made a daily trip to the Organic Oasis for a cup of no-frills coffee each morning during this first week of winter break. Each morning my heart rate tripled when I walked in and saw Zack behind the counter. I figure this is as good as going to the gym and doing cardio. I can’t get Cleo’s voice out of my head. I don’t want Zack to know that I go there for coffee because his hair has gotten shaggier and his cheeks are even redder in the wintertime, which in turn make his eyes look particularly green behind his adorable glasses, but on the other hand, I do want to appear receptive if he happens to decide that he’s interested in me. This is all way too complicated and I’m sure I’m bungling the whole thing, but some of these mornings we just got to talking, and when I wasn’t focusing too much on what he might be thinking about me or whether or not I was appearing receptive to what he must be thinking about me, we actually had a lot to say to each other.

I asked Zack about Christmas and if he celebrates it. He said absolutely, that he celebrates Christmas every year without fail. It’s a family tradition. Every Christmas he and his older brother and his parents go to a matinee and then out for Chinese food at Ah Fong’s on State Street. That is Zack’s Christmas. No tree. No Santa Claus. Just a movie and some lo mein. I asked him if he’d ever been to anyone else’s house for Christmas and if so, was he uncomfortable? He gave me a funny look and said, “Simone, are you inviting me over to your house for Christmas?”

Well, that was pretty much the end of my cool façade. I turned red. I sputtered. And then I blurted out, “No!” much more forcefully than I meant to, and he said that he was just joking, and then I told him all about the Rivka Situation and how she’s coming to our house for Christmas and how I want to make sure that she feels comfortable, and he said something like “Wow, what an amazing story.”

I really regret the way I shouted no, because even though I wasn’t inviting him over for Christmas and even though I don’t want him to think that I was inviting him over for Christmas, I also don’t want him to think that I think inviting him over to my house is a repulsive idea, which might have been the impression I left him with by shouting no.

So the tree is up and the star sweeper is perched on top, surveying a huge pile of presents. As I mentioned, Dad’s goose is in the oven, and we are listening to the sound track to the old CBS television special
A Charlie Brown Christmas
. It’s melancholy and beautiful and not overtly Christmas-like, so I think it’s a good choice for Rivka. Mom bought a menorah, and I looked at the calendar and noted that tonight is the sixth night of Hanukah, so I already have it set up on the mantel over the fireplace, above the stockings, with six candles plus the middle one you use to light the others, which is called the shammes candle (I learned this on the Web. What did people do before the Internet?), so that makes a total of seven candles.

I’m sort of embarrassed when Rivka reaches into her bag and removes her own menorah. Did she think I’d forget? Didn’t I tell her that we’d celebrate Hanukah tonight? Does she think I’m so clueless about Judaism that I couldn’t figure out that to celebrate Hanukah you need a menorah and candles? When I point out that I already have one, she just says that’s great. Then she sees the skepticism on my face.

“This menorah belonged to my mother’s parents. They got it as a wedding gift. I light it every night of Hanukah, no matter where I am.” She looks at it proudly and puts her hand on my shoulder. “You know, with menorahs and Hanukah, the more the merrier.”

I look at it up on the mantel next to the bright shiny copper menorah my mother bought. Ours looks new and tacky. It screams,
Hi. I’m a menorah. I know you aren’t Jewish and you have never used me before, but let me help you get through your very first Hanukah!
Rivka’s menorah is made of heavy iron with fine carvings of birds and trees and fruits on it. It has permanent dried wax drippings of many different colors from what are clearly decades of Hanukahs. Rivka puts seven candles in her menorah and then steps back and surveys the mantel with a smile.

“Jake,” she says, “would you step outside and see if you can count three stars? Once there are at least three stars in the sky, we can light the menorahs.”

Jake grabs his parka and seems really happy to take up the task, like he’s the man for the job. I think Jake is feeling a little left out of this whole Hanukah thing and is glad to have a role that belongs just to him.

It’s a quiet Christmas Eve. Some years we have more family here. My aunt and uncle and cousins from Sag Harbor. My aunt from California. My grandmother used to come, but she died three years ago. Jules and Cleo are often here, but this year they decided to stay home and Darius is supposed to come over for dessert, which is going to be the first time he’s come face to face with Jules since that fateful afternoon in Cleo’s room. But tonight is a chance for Jules and Darius to get a fresh start, and Cleo is just excited that she’s spending Christmas Eve with her boyfriend. James was here last year and I invited him again, but he decided to spend the evening with his family. Last year he hated them all. This year it seems like things are better. They weren’t too pleased when he first came out to them, but now I think they understand that this isn’t something that’s going to change no matter what they do or tell him to do, or no matter how many cute girls his father tries to point out to him in the Twelve Oaks yearbook. So in my house this Christmas Eve, on this sixth night of Hanukah, it’s just our little nuclear family. And Rivka.

Jake comes back in the house. His hair is white with snow, and he even has some flakes perched on his unusually long eyelashes. He shakes his head, and snow lands all over the entryway. He wipes his nose on his parka.

“I can’t see a thing out there. Forget about stars—I can’t even see the house across the street. It’s a blizzard.”

Rivka hurries over to Jake, takes his coat from him, and hangs it up on the hook in the hallway, like she’s welcoming him into her house. He’s blowing on his hands to get them warm.

“I’m so sorry, Jake. I wasn’t thinking about the snow. I didn’t mean to send you out into the elements like that.”

“Don’t worry about it. I love snowstorms.”

“If you can’t see stars, can you still light the menorah?” I ask.

“Of course you can. I don’t think the three-stars rule is rooted in any ancient Jewish text or anything; it’s just what we used to do in our house when I was growing up. We were always so eager to light the candles that my parents had to come up with something to keep us from asking every ten seconds if it was time yet.”

I go into the kitchen to get Mom and Dad. They are engaged in something extremely complicated and have the look of two people who are in way over their heads. There are three frying pans on the stove. They are holding two spatulas each. A drop of hot oil just landed on my wrist and I’m still standing in the doorway, so I can only imagine what kind of pain is being inflicted upon them as they stand inches from the stovetop.

“What’s going on in here?” I ask.

“Latkes,” Dad shouts without looking up from the stove. “Lots and lots of latkes.”

Mom rolls her eyes. Clearly this isn’t the first time tonight he’s made the extremely lame “lots of latkes” joke. I move closer and see that there are little pancakes of shredded potatoes frying in the pans and a whole stack next to the stove on the counter.

“It’s time to light the Hanukah candles.”

“This is the last batch.” Dad is still shouting even though I’m standing right next to him. “We’re in the home stretch. Wait for us.”

Mom and Dad emerge from the kitchen a few minutes later beaming, their aprons stained with oil. Mom turns off
A Charlie Brown Christmas
and also the lights from the tree, as if to eradicate any sense of That Other Holiday while we focus in on Hanukah. We all look at Rivka like kindergartners waiting for their teacher to describe the next activity.

Rivka hands me a book of matches. I smile when I see what’s printed on it:
THE BRIAR PATCH
. She has another book in her hands. She looks at me and nods, and I understand that this means I am to do just as she does. She lights the middle candle, which we already know from my crack Internet research is called the shammes, on her beautiful menorah. I do the same on our brand-new shiny store-bought menorah. She extinguishes the lit match with a flick of her wrist. I do the same, but it takes me three flicks to get it to go out. Then she starts to sing again in that soft, low, beautiful voice of hers as she takes the shammes and with its flickering flame lights the remaining six candles. Dad has always had this terrible habit of singing along with anything and everything, even when it’s clear he has never heard the song before and doesn’t know any of the words, so he starts humming along with Rivka as she sings in Hebrew, but somehow, tonight, this works. There is music in our house, beautiful, soulful, and melancholy music to rival
A Charlie Brown Christmas
. The candles are all lit, fourteen of them. Their flames are reflected in the mirror above the mantel, so the fourteen become twenty-eight candles burning. Rivka starts to sing again, a different tune, and Dad hums along. I gaze at the candles and their reflection in the mirror, and at my own reflection, and it is as if my face is surrounded by twenty-eight bright and shining stars.

The singing is over. The candles are burning. Rivka goes to the hallway, where she deposited her bags when she arrived, and returns to the living room with her arms full. “Presents.”

She gives Mom and Dad a basket with wine, expensive-looking olive oils, jars of preserves, and small tins of spices, which makes Dad practically drool. She hands Jake a package, and he looks a little embarrassed because I’m sure he didn’t get her anything, but he still tears greedily into the paper. Rivka knit Jake a striped wool hat with earflaps and a matching scarf. He looks totally adorable when he puts them on; he jumps up and checks himself in the mirror and seems pleased. Then Rivka hands me my present. It’s large and flat and square. Unlike Jake, I’m careful and precise when I open my gifts. I always imagine that I could reuse the paper, but of course I never do. This wrapping paper is blue with white stars, and inside I find a gorgeous leather photo album. I run my hands over it.

“This is beautiful. I love it.” I start to open it, but Rivka reaches over and gently closes it.

“You might want to wait until later to look at it.”

I just assumed it was empty, but now I understand that Rivka has filled it for me, and she understands that I might want to wait for a quieter, more private moment to look at all those people, all that past.

I reach under the tree for Rivka’s present and think for a minute that I probably shouldn’t have put it under the tree, but she doesn’t seem to mind at all. I smile when I hand it to her because of the remarkable symmetry of our gifts. I give Rivka a box filled with picture frames from one of my favorite stores in Boston. In the end I bought seven frames, mostly small ones, in different shapes, each in a weathered painted wood that I figured would go well in her house. She’s sitting with the open box on her lap carefully looking at each one, and I notice that her eyes are filling with tears. I can tell that I don’t need to explain my gift. She understands that I want her to put her family into these frames and put the frames all around her house. She understands that what I wanted to tell her with this gift was that you can’t lock your past in a drawer just because it’s too complicated or painful to look at every day.

Even before we sit down to dinner, it becomes clear that Rivka is not driving back to the Cape tonight. Not in this snowstorm. No one is going anywhere, so we are in no hurry. We sit around the dinner table until well past ten. Just in case you were wondering, goose is kind of nasty, and unfortunately, although it smells like chicken, it doesn’t taste at all like chicken. But Rivka proclaims that the latkes are among the best she’s ever had, that they even stand up to Hannah’s, which I imagine is quite a compliment. Dad grins proudly. When Jake asks what potato pancakes have to do with Hanukah Rivka tells the Hanukah story about how there was this oil and it was only supposed to burn for one night but instead it lasted for eight nights, so during Hanukah you should fry stuff in oil. Jake nods as if this makes perfect sense to him.

I spend the evening watching Rivka closely, looking for signs of her illness. Does she seem tired? Is she paler than usual? Does she seem to move more slowly or with more deliberation? Does she have a decreased appetite? (This last question isn’t really fair because I wouldn’t expect anyone to eat much of Dad’s goose.) The problem is, I don’t know Rivka well enough to judge when things are changing or slipping. Tonight she seems very much alive. And this fact alone is still a novelty to me.

After dinner Rivka teaches Jake how to play dreidel, and they sit on the floor spinning it and shouting out and exchanging chocolate coins that Rivka supplied. Jake is still wearing his wool hat with the earflaps, and they seem to be having a great time. I sneak upstairs to call Cleo and check how her night with Darius and Jules went. She sounds tired and happy. “He gave me a beautiful necklace. I’m never taking it off.”

When did she become this person?

I call James, who says that he’s planning on staying up all night waiting by the fireplace so he can hitch a ride out of this hellhole on the fat man’s sleigh, and I interpret this to mean that his evening wasn’t bad at all, because when James is really depressed he loses his sense of humor.