Gravity (2 page)

“We’re almost at the turnoff. Do you want to stop for something to eat?”

“Uh, no, thanks.”

“You’re not hungry?”

“No, not really.”

“Not even for French fries?” Bubbie makes a face.

“They’re probably not kosher.”

“What about a salad?”

“Bubbie, the whole restaurant wouldn’t be kosher.”

She shakes her head and pats my shoulder. “If that’s what you want.”

Bubbie has packed an entire store of kosher food for me: jars of pickles, smoked meat, loaves of rye bread, cream cheese,
tubs of coleslaw, hummus, fresh pasta that we will have to eat by the end of the week. She promised she’d prepare only kosher food.

BUBBIE FINALLY TURNS
off the highway and maneuvers her old Cadillac slowly down a gravel lane. I roll down the window to hang out my head. Frogs chirp in the marsh. I see water by the edge of the forest, or is it the other way round?

I am out of the car before Bubbie even turns off the motor. “Come and see how nice the cottage is,” she calls.

“Later,” I yell over my shoulder. I run down the winding gravel path past the wooden cottage, out of the darkness of the fir trees, across the grass to the shore. Water shimmers in the late afternoon light, lapping against the giant slabs of rock. A cool breeze ruffles the surface, blowing my sticky hair off my face. I reach the end of the dock, sit for a second; then I lie down. The crickets sing. I inhale the scent of lake, letting my limbs ease into the rough wood of the dock, dangling my hands in the fresh cool water.

WHEN I WAKE
early the next morning, I can see slow heavy mist twisting over the glassy surface of the water. I slip out of my sheets and quietly pad across the living room floor so as not to wake Bubbie. Outside, I make my way across the porch, down the stairs, through the dewy grass and past the hammock hanging between two maple trees. I sit on the dock, shivering in my sweater. I pull my knees into my chest,
the dock cold under my bare feet. Across the bay the island is obscured by the thick mist. To my left, sun slants over the marsh of tree stumps and cattails. Out in the bay beyond the point, a family of loons slowly disappear into the thick vapor.

Bubbie rents this cottage every summer, but the first and only other time I’ve been here I was seven. I’d never seen a lake, a forest, or wildflowers, had never left the city. We arrived in the evening, our bodies stuck to the hot plastic car seats, the metal seatbelts burning our skin. When we pulled off the highway onto the gravel road down to the cottage there was a sudden cool breeze through the deep green of the trees. Abba parked the car by the woodpile, and Bubbie came down to meet us. It was twilight; the first stars were appearing in the pinkish sky.

“Come,” Bubbie had said to Neshama and me. She took us down to the water’s edge and we waded in beside the dock. I nudged small snail shells with my toes. The island across the bay was covered with pines, the occasional birch gleaming white. “I’ve never seen so many trees!” I exclaimed.

“Or mosquitoes,” Neshama added.

“Can we go swimming?”

“Sure, I’ll come with you.” Bubbie stripped off her sundress, and waded in naked. Ima and Abba had gone into the cottage to unpack. Neshama and I looked at each other, giggled and took off our clothes. We eased our naked bodies into the water, our toes sliding into the viscous mud, darkness enveloping us, washing away the city. I fell in love with the wet cool on my hot skin.

I floated on my back, looking up at the sky, listening to the waves slap against the shore. The stars glimmered like a mosaic of lights, brighter than I’d ever seen before.

Abba was furious when he came down to the water and saw us wrapped in just our towels. “You have bathing suits. Why aren’t you wearing them!”

“Oh, who cares?” Bubbie said to him. “They’re just little girls. No one is around.”

“And you?”

Bubbie wrapped the towel around herself tighter. “So, don’t look.”

“When
Moshiach
comes, there’ll be time for swimming naked.”

“Would you just relax and forget about your religious
mishigas
for a day? Enough waiting.”

Ima said nothing. She just sat tight-lipped on the porch, sweating in her long-sleeved blouse.

Abba packed us off in a hurry.

I have been waiting to come back ever since. I have been waiting for a breeze through the pine trees on a hot summer afternoon and the chorus of peeping frogs mating in the swamp.

Waiting is in my blood. My parents are professionals at it. After years of planning, they are finally in Israel for the summer. Only Bubbie waits for no one and no thing. Life is to live now. To enjoy. “What?” Bubbie says. “I should sit and wait for the messiah to come?”

I stand up on the end of the dock with my prayer book and sing “
Shma Yisroel Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.
”
Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. My voice echoes across the water.

I have been waiting to pray outside. In Toronto, surrounded by paved streets, it seems silly to pray for rain for the crops. Once I sneaked out to pray in the ravine, but people kept coming by, and I didn’t sing out loud.

I chant, “
Ve’ahafatah, adonai.
” Love the Lord.

The screen door slams. Bubbie comes out wearing a long, faded blue T-shirt, her legs bare. She strides down to the dock and sheds the T-shirt, revealing a saggy pink swimsuit. “Take me to the river, wash me down,” she bellows before she dives into the water. The mist has lifted, and the sky and water are cerulean. I close my prayer book and watch Bubbie’s arms scissor powerfully through the water in even strokes. She swims out to the middle of the bay until I can barely see her, just the white of her hair. She waves to me, then swims out of sight. I try to continue my prayers. I keep glancing up anxiously until she comes back.

Bubbie’s stroke propels her through the water, her arms rotating in an even rhythm. She swims up to the ladder, her breath deep and heavy. Pulling herself onto the dock, her arm muscles flex underneath her wrinkled skin.

“I didn’t know you could do that.”

Bubbie wipes water from her face with her towel. “You mean swim?”

“Yeah.”

“You know I go to the club all the time.”

I shrug. “I thought you did water aerobics or something.”

She laughs. “What made you think that?”

“I don’t know.”

Bubbie towels off her hair and bathing suit.

“I’ve never seen that suit before.”

She shrugs. “I only wear it here. Are you going in?”

I shake my head and sigh. “I wish I could swim like you.”

“I’ll teach you.”

“Really?”

“We’ll be here a month. What else are you going to do?” She plucks at her bathing suit straps. “Besides, it’s important to stay in shape. All those rabbis with their
bochels
and high cholesterol. I’d be happy to help you improve your stroke.”

Neshama is always going on about exercise too. She and Ima both have tiny bird bodies. Ima really does look like a small white sparrow, her backbones poking through her skin. Neshama works out. Lifts weights. Abba’s always bugging her about what she wears at the gym. Neshama says she wears track pants and a T-shirt, but I’ve seen exercise tights when she does her wash.

Neshama has a tight little bum and stomach muscles that she can clench together in a hard ribbon down her belly when she leans forward and grunts.

Bubbie heads back up to the cottage, and I follow behind her, even though I’m not finished my prayers. The sun beats down, and my stomach feels empty.

The cottage is a dark log cabin with a screened-in porch. The kitchen has open shelves instead of cupboards, and an old stainless steel sink. In the main room a large stone fireplace dominates the far wall. Several old orange recliners and a reddish brown couch droop in the center of the room.
A stack of
Life
magazines from the seventies fills a wooden crate beside the couch. An old lantern and a pair of cross-country skis hang above the fireplace.

Bubbie pours herself a cup of coffee and grabs a Popsicle stick from a package in a drawer.

“Coffee?” she offers.

“No, thanks.”

“Popsicle stick?”

“Pardon?”

“Just kidding.” She brandishes the Popsicle stick at me. “They’re so I don’t smoke.” She pops the stick in her mouth and chews with her back teeth. “I will not smoke today.” Her hair is flat on one side, her eyelids bare of eye shadow or liner. I have never seen her without makeup.

“Bubbie, you quit smoking five years ago.”

“Yes, but now I’m stuck on the sticks.” She puts bread in the toaster.

I watch Bubbie chew. “So, what do you do here?”

Bubbie runs her hands through her hair, rests a hip against the counter. “Swim in the morning, read in the afternoon, obsess over birds. Yellow finch.” She points out over the porch to the bird feeder.

“You know about birds?”

Bubbie nods. “What are you going to do this summer?”

I sip my orange juice and look out the sliding glass doors. “I don’t know. Look for frogs, practice swimming.”

Bubbie hands me a piece of toast. I get out the peanut butter and smooth it on. I quickly whisper a blessing before taking a bite.

“You know, you don’t have to do that here.”

“The
brucha
?”

“Yeah, I’m not going to report you.”

I shrug. “It’s just habit.”

“Is that why do you do it?”

I take a bite of toast. “Yeah, and you know, to be closer to
Hashem
.”

Bubbie chokes on her coffee. “God?”

“Yeah, God.”

“And what do you think that is?”

I pause mid-bite, my brow crinkling. “
Hashem
? You know, God is just God. Creator, commandments, all that stuff.”

Bubbie gawks at me. “You really believe all that?”

“What’s not to believe?”

I give Bubbie a fuzzy answer because I don’t really spend much time thinking about God. Keeping kosher and saying prayers is just normal to me. Bubbie has me confused with Ima and Abba, who are reborn Jews. Every ritual they keep is about “loving God” and “being spiritual.”

God is too big an idea to even hold in my head all at one time, vaporous and, well, enormous. It’s like trying to think about the whole ocean all at once. I can only focus on one mollusk or seaweed tendril at a time.

AFTER BREAKFAST BUBBIE
gives me the new bathing suit, a blue two-piece. “A bikini?” I say incredulously.

“It’s not a bikini. It’s two pieces, tank style. I thought you’d be too long in the body for a one-piece.”

I stare at it.

In the bedroom I pull on the suit, trying to see myself in the small mirror above the wooden bureau. I trace my fingers over the scooped neckline. The bottoms are cut low over the belly and high over my narrow hips. I lift my arms over my head, striking a pose in front of the mirror.

Down on the dock a gentle breeze laps the water into small waves. I hang onto the ladder, trying to keep my feet out of the weeds.

Bubbie stands on the dock bent at the waist, arms rotating. “You need to cup the water with your hands and pull back. Two motions: cup and pull.”

I stand in the muck, circling my arms.

“Good. Now kick your feet at the same time.”

“Now?”

“Sure.”

I take a deep breath and plunge into the dark water. My arms crash over my head: cup and pull. I gasp for air, hold it, drag the other arm up and over. Feet: kick. Hands: cup and pull. I forget to breathe. Water rushes up my nose. I surface spitting and coughing, trying to keep my feet out of the jelly-like sand.

“Good,” Bubbie sings out from her deck chair. “Good try.”

I practice again and again until I am blue and shivering. “Enough,” Bubbie says. “Enough for today.” She passes me a towel, and I collapse into a deck chair.

“Look at those chicken arms.”

“What?”

Bubbie pokes my upper arm. “Chicken arms. You need muscles to swim.”

I examine my bony arms.

“You should do push-ups, every day. Then you’ll be cutting through that water like a fish.”

Bubbie goes up for drinks. I get down on my chest and try to push my body up. I grunt, but nothing moves. I roll up my towel under my legs and try pushing up from my knees.

“Keep your butt down, back flat.” Bubbie puts a glass of lemonade down on the dock for me.

I try again, face burning, heart pounding.

“That’s better. You’ll look like Charles Atlas in no time.”

Whoever that is. I collapse onto my belly and peer at the dark green shadows the wooden slats of the dock throw onto the water.

Bubbie picks up a biography of Henry Kissinger, the brim of her floppy straw hat shading her face. I drop my head back, let the heat seep into me. I too will dive and swim all the way across the bay.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON I
pull out a set of small candleholders and a bottle of kosher wine from the box Abba packed for me. “It’s
Shabbos
,” I announce to Bubbie.

“Well, what do you know. I lose track of the days up here.” Bubbie opens the freezer and tosses a bag of
challah
buns at me. I catch the bag and take out two to defrost. A few frozen poppy seeds flake off.

If we were at home there’d be a special meal—chicken or salmon fillets—and a white tablecloth. Tonight we’re only having pasta salad and corn-on-the-cob on the picnic table outside.

When it’s time to sit down to dinner, the sun just starting to descend, Bubbie says, “Okay, let’s do those blessings.”

I stand up reluctantly and whisper the blessing. I’ve never blessed the
Shabbos
candles without Ima and Neshama singing beside me. Bubbie watches me, not joining in, her arms crossed against her chest.

“Are you done?” she asks when I stop praying.

“You’re supposed to say amen.”

“Amen.” She goes to get the corn before I can bless the wine or the cold rocks of bread.

If Ima and Abba were here we’d sing a song before dinner. Abba would bless me, laying his hands on my head and telling me he hoped I’d turn out like Sarah, Rachel, Rebecca and Leah. Neshama and I would harmonize
zemirot
after dinner, and there’d be Abba’s apple cake or
rugelach
for dessert.