All I Love and Know (19 page)

“He's been constipated since we got here,” Daniel said. “This is an event, his first bowel movement in two and a half weeks.”

Dalia nodded, reaching to smooth Noam's hair off his forehead, then clearly thinking better of it. “It's very common in grieving babies.”

Daniel stared at her. “Constipation? You're kidding.”

“No, why would I be kidding?” she asked.

“That makes so much sense! It didn't occur to me . . .”

She shrugged. “How does a baby mourn? He doesn't have a language for what he's lost.”

They looked at Noam, who had picked up the wipes box and was turning it around in his hands with great interest.

“I'm sorry about your brother,” Dalia said, moving forward quickly to ease the box out of the baby's hands before he could put it in his mouth. “I have a brother too, in New York. He's homosexual, too.”

Daniel nodded warily. She said it without looking at him, without any kind of emotional fanfare. She wasn't a particularly warm person, he thought, except maybe to the baby, but all Israelis loved babies and talked to them with warm expressiveness. He wished she had said “gay” instead of “homosexual,” which always made him flinch because it made it sound like a medical condition. But she seemed smart to him, and observant, and not unkind.

After dinner, on the phone with Matt, he told him how, in front of the caseworker, he gave the baby the longest, most disastrous bath in modern history. “It had everything,” he said, a grin saturating his weary voice. “We ran out of hot water and I'd forgotten to turn on the boiler. The baby conked his head on the faucet and actually bled.” He laughed. “Matt, I actually made him bleed. And those scalps, they're still a little soft, it turns out, so he'll probably have a bruise that his maternal grandparents will show to every social service official in the country. But wait. Then he had a second bowel movement—a much much looser one, I'm here to tell you—right in the tub. Which made me vomit. Yes, literally.” He held the phone away from his ear a little and waited for Matt's laughter to subside. “We must have used at least twelve towels. Okay, four. By the end, I was soaking wet.” He paused. “We
so
shouldn't be allowed to raise children.”

“It probably at least broke the ice with the caseworker,” Matt said.

“I guess you could call it that. And the baby's pretty happy tonight. We played a rousing game of Napkin on the Head.”

“What's that?”

“A game where you put a napkin on your head,” Daniel said.

“Aha,” Matt said.

“It was hilarious.”

“I'll bet it was,” Matt said, smiling. “Hey, listen, I've been wanting to tell you something.” He paused. “I've started taking Hebrew lessons.”

Daniel blinked. “You have?” he asked softly.

“I know that you'll want Gal to continue speaking Hebrew when she grows up, and teach Noam, too,” Matt said in a rush. “So I thought I should get in on it. Is that okay?”

“Honey,” Daniel said. He knew what a stretch it was for Matt, what a gesture.

They hung together on the phone for a while, not speaking. “I love you,” Daniel finally said.

“Me too, babe.”

When he got off the phone he went into the kids' room, where Noam was asleep in a clean diaper and shirt, and his mother was supervising Gal as she got into her pajamas. “I just got off the phone with Uncle Matt,” he said. “Guess what? He's started taking Hebrew lessons!”

Gal looked at him and considered. “Really?”

“Really! We can help him, right?”

“Yeah!” she said in the fake chipper voice she used when prompted by an adult to be enthusiastic.

He looked at his mother, who wasn't very enthusiastic at all; in fact, she was tight-lipped.

“What?” he demanded.

Her eyes darted toward Gal.
Later
, she mouthed.

A few hours later, after Gal had had two books read to her, a meltdown, and a cup of water, and had finally fallen asleep, they repaired to the kitchen. Daniel asked, “Do you have a problem you want to discuss?”

“I don't have a problem,” his mother said.

“Then what was that back there in the bedroom? And what was that with the caseworker earlier, about Matt having to change his entire lifestyle?”

“I didn't say that!” his mother said.

Daniel was quiet. He didn't often fight with his mother, because when he did she grabbed the opportunity to crowd up too close to him with her tears and her drama. Joel had done better with her, their whole lives, exploding easily and making up easily, too; her drama didn't bother him. Daniel preferred to stay away from that. But he had dealt with her undermining of Matt all day long.

“Just say you have a problem with Matt, Mother. Just say it!”

“I have a problem with Matt! There, are you happy?”

Daniel gave her a look, a challenge.

“He's frivolous! He's pretty and shallow! He cares more about the latest styles than he does about these children. I've visited you; I've seen him have a hissy fit because he got a bad haircut, or couldn't find the right shoes.”

Daniel snorted in disbelief. Sam came in, asking if anyone was making coffee, but stopped when he saw the looks on their faces. “What's going on?” he asked.

“Mom's busy getting all the homophobia out of her system.”

“Daniel!” his father said. “Your mother is not a homophobe.” She had been an avid PFLAG member when Daniel came out, so that was the official position.

“I have no problem with you, Daniel,” Lydia said, crying now. “I've come to terms with your brother choosing to leave his children with you. It's Matt I have trouble with. The idea that
Matt
is going to raise my grandchildren—Matt! and not me—I can't get over that, I'm sorry.”

“Well, you're going to have to get used to it,” Daniel said.

“Don't you think I know that?” she cried.

They stood in stricken positions around the kitchen, and then Sam said quietly, “My only problem is that the kids have already been through so much. Being in a gay family, which is so much tougher, seems like a lot to ask of them.”

“Oh God,” Daniel said, turning to leave the room. Then he stopped and whirled around. “You know, Dad,” he said heatedly. “People always say that about being gay. When their kids come out, they say, ‘I'm just worried that your life is going to be harder.' But it's
they
who make their kids' lives hard! It's people like them, who don't support their kids because their lives are supposedly going to be harder. It's totally circular, can't you see?”

“Tell me something,” his mother was saying, pointing at him. “What happens when Gal needs her first bra, when she gets her period? Can you imagine Matt dealing with that in a sensitive way?”

“Our friend Peter is a very talented drag queen,” Daniel said. “I thought I'd let him take care of it.”

There was silence. “Is that supposed to be funny?” Sam asked.

“Do
you
think Matt will make a good, committed father?” his mother demanded with a look that challenged Daniel to be honest, that tried to bore into his soul.

“Yes I do,” Daniel said. He said it fiercely, thinking about what a goof Matt was, how imaginative and affectionate and funny. If the kids had any shot at having a fun home with them, it would be because of Matt, not him, who couldn't really be called a fun guy under even the best of circumstances.

She leaned back on the counter. “I don't believe you. I don't believe you think that.”

It was this kind of shot, Daniel thought, that made him hate fighting with her. A feeling of shame stole over him, and he flushed. She thought that because she had seen him treat Matt like shit over the past couple of weeks.

“I'm through with this conversation, Mom. He's my
partner
. If I get these kids, he will raise them with me. And I'm just hoping—I'm
hoping
—that you're going to help me get them, and not sabotage me.”

“Of course I am!” his mother cried. “I'm just being honest with you. Would you prefer I lied about my feelings?”

Daniel groaned. They always asked you this, and you always had to say no, of course you wanted them to be totally honest about how disgusting and inferior they thought you were.

“Enough,” Sam said.

Daniel opened his mouth to speak.

“I mean it,” Sam said, his voice breaking and his face red. “Enough! Isn't it hard enough? These kids—their lives are
over
! That bastard—”

Lydia stepped up to him and laid her hand on his back. “Shh,” she murmured.

“It's okay, Dad,” Daniel whispered. It was hard to look at him: emotion was grabbing and contorting Sam's normally equable face and making it grotesque. Daniel stepped up to his father and touched his forehead with his, eyes shut, gripping his shoulder. “Their lives aren't over. Just very challenging.”

Sam clutched the back of Daniel's neck and squeezed, nodding, his chest shuddering.

A FEW DAYS LATER,
he drove to Yaakov and Malka's to pick up the kids. He'd had a blessedly quiet two and a half days, and had finally caught up with some work, emailing the various writers for progress reports, and having a long phone conversation with April about the various news stories that needed to go in the College Notes section in the front of the magazine. The president of the college had given a speech on the importance of area studies in the wake of 9/11—along with a blistering attack on the reduced grant monies for scholars in those fields—that had been covered in the
New York Times
, and they sat over it for a while, deciding whether to print the whole thing or just portions of it; after they decided to write a story about it instead of simply printing the speech, they went through and chose the quotations they thought most important to preserve and to highlight. When he hung up the phone, Daniel stayed at the kitchen table for a little while, the yellow legal pad beside him covered with notes, basking in that hour or so of quiet concentration and small problem solving, the knowledge of how very good he was at his work.

He had gotten a call scheduling the first parental competency visit for the following week, and had spent some time haggling with various social service administrators about bunching the visits so that Matt wouldn't have to come more than once. Now they had four bunched within a two-week period, and Matt had bought a round-trip ticket for that length of time. The back-and-forth was starting to be a financial strain, and Sam had offered to pay for this flight.

He parked with two wheels on the tiny sidewalk in front of Yaakov and Malka's apartment. He loved Rehavia: it was one of the oldest European neighborhoods in Jerusalem, stone buildings cast into lovely shade by a profusion of plants and trees, climbing plants shooting up the buildings' sides, the occasional professional building—of doctors or small Europe-based companies—marked by modest gold plaques in Hebrew and English. He walked up the walkway and into the cool dark hall, and up the half-flight to their apartment, where he knocked softly on the door.

Malka opened the door and stepped backward in surprise.

“Shalom,” he said.

“Shalom. Are you early? The children are at the park with Yaakov.” The apartment was dim behind her, and he could smell the sweet mustiness of an old people's house.

Daniel looked at his watch. “No, I'm on time,” he said. “But I can wait. Would you like me to wait outside?” The lawyer had forbidden them to discuss the custody case with anyone, especially the opposing parties, and he dreaded the idea of making small talk with Malka.

She blinked nervously, smoothed down her dress. “No, come in,” she said.

She led him into the living room; the blinds were half-closed. Over the couch, which had a tasseled cover on it, hung a fanciful painting of a Hasidic violinist, in the style of Chagall. On the side wall hung a batik of the Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall at sunset. He sat on the couch. A huge oak display cabinet that held decorative eggs and birds, spun-glass clowns, and china plates on stands darkened the other side of the room. On the side table next to him stood some black-and-white photos in heavy silver frames. His eye ran along a few faded photos of Yaakov in groups of khaki-clad pioneers with caps and rifles. One had fallen over, and Daniel reached to stand it up again. It showed a young Malka wearing a white blouse and black skirt, her hair pulled back, holding a violin to her chin with a faraway look in her eyes. He looked up; she was hovering at the doorway.

“Did I hear once that you played in the Jerusalem Symphony?”

“Yes,” she said, “first violin,” with a touch of pride.

“I play violin, too,” he said. “
Played
. It's been a long time. I was in the Chicago youth orchestra.”

She nodded. “I used to play a lot when Ilana was a baby, because the music soothed her,” she said, perching on the arm of a chair.

They talked violin concerti. He felt as though he needed to be very, very gentle around her. He was remembering a conversation he'd once had with Ilana, in which she told him that her mother carried the burden of the Holocaust for all of them—as though if she only carried enough despair, she could spare them. Yaakov, meanwhile, had suffered the same inconceivable losses—of his entire family, his very sense of personhood—but he had remained moving, surviving labor camps and death marches. It was striking, she told him, what a psychological difference it made to be able to move, even if under the constant threat of machine-gun fire, should you falter and slow.

He sat there for a while longer. Malka went into the kitchen, and he heard shuffling, a cabinet opening, a clink of silverware on a plate. He looked around and tried to imagine a teenage Gal in this apartment with her friends. Where would they sprawl around and talk smack in this silent, stuffy place where dust motes turned silently in the few glimmers of light let in from the blinds? He knew the answer immediately: She would never bring her friends here—she would spend her afternoons and evenings at their houses, while Malka made Yaakov call their parents to check up on her, and Noam played endless computer games behind a closed bedroom door.