Yom Kippur as Manifest in an Approaching Dorsal Fin (4 page)

phone ring at any time but still less at this

hour. Anyone we want to talk with has our

cell numbers. Those phones are off now and

this call is either a wrong number or

important.

“It was your father. It sounds serious. He

wants you to call him.” I do.

“I wanted you to know your grandmother

is in the hospital. She is catatonic and the

funeral will be anywhere from two days from

now to two weeks. I’d like for you to be there.”

I expect to hear more of her condition but

he talks only of the funeral. I will be there and tell him so. I will go for him. There is no other reason.

A day passes and I look at my calendar,

mark all the days a funeral would be an incon-

venience in the next two weeks. There is state-

wide testing at our school on Monday and

Tuesday, and then two days of the same the

week after. A writing conference the next

weekend. I will miss what I miss but would

rather not. I’d rather not go at all.

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Monday comes and I ask about the bereave-

ment policy of our school board. There is

none. One takes sick leave. I fill out the forms in advance and leave them with the secretary.

She gives me her home number in case I find,

in the night or early morning, the need to

drive south to Delray instead of to work or,

when away, if I need to let them know I need

extra days. Candy asks if I don’t want to leave

now, to be there when my grandmother dies.

No. That is not necessary. I don’t explain. She

is kind, soft, and I would guess knew her

grandmother well.

Wednesday morning. Early, and I am at

school, as usual, by eight-fifteen. Monday was

the first day of statewide testing. All day.

Tuesday was the second. The next day for

testing is the Monday to follow and finally I

have the chance to teach. I have planned to

introduce the concepts of archetypes and

archetypal themes, characters, and symbols,

and have the students search these out in a

film before delving into written literature. I

am teaching the first of five classes today and

have barely finished one day of a four-day les-

son when my phone rings.

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Adam Byrn Tritt

My wife has called, the front office secre-

tary tells me, and it is important I call her

back. Lee never calls me at work. I know what

this is and, excusing myself to my students,

call her. My grandmother died at eight-fif-

teen that morning.

I pause, wait, nothing. I expected not to feel

much but nothing was much less than antici-

pated. There just wasn’t anything there. I say

thank you, tell her I’m going to go to the office and let them know I need to leave as soon as

is practical. I tell her I love her and put down the phone. My students are listening. The bell

for second period rings and I leave the room,

as the students do, to find the assistant

principal.

Arrangements are quickly made and the

AP, a kind, helpful soul, follows me back to

my class where students are waiting outside

my door. They know something must be up.

We enter, I gather my things while I hurriedly

discuss with Mr. Kaminski how to explain

the lesson, written on the board, to the sub. I

know I will have to redo this. He tells me not

to worry and I grab my things and leave.

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Funeral, Expurgated

Off to my son’s high school five minutes

away. I check him out and we head home to

pack. We have no funeral clothes. What we

have will do. Black dungarees, a black shirt

and shoes for me, the same for Alek. All into

bags. Bags into the truck. Truck onto the road

south. It is barely edging toward eleven in the

morning.

We drive. Alek asks me for no stories of her.

He knows there are few to hear and he has

heard them all. He has met her on a few occa-

sions, his great-grandmother, but she knew

little about him. She would talk to us contin-

uously of her other grandchildren, the won-

ders they had produced and challenges over

which they had prevailed. Alek would listen,

politely. Always politely, quietly. She once

offered him ten dollars to talk. What did he

have to say? That is his memory of her. He is

her second great-grandchild.

When my daughter was born, in 1985, my

grandmother grilled my wife. There is no

other word for it. It was the type of question-

ing often reserved for congressional hearings

or associated with cop movies where the sus-

pect sits, uncomfortable, in an interrogation

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Adam Byrn Tritt

room, under a bright bare bulb. What did she

need, how much are such things? How hard

was I working and why didn’t we have

enough? In the end, she sent my grandfather

out to the car to get the checkbook, wrote for

a moment, enclosed it in a card, put it into

an envelope and sealed, it handing it imme-

diately to Lee. It was one hundred dollars.

The total Sef received over time, given in one

lump sum. All she’d ever give for her first

great-grandchild.

My father would insist I visit, and we did.

He would ask me to call and always I did,

whether asked or not. The conversations were

short, brusque. I would ask questions and she

might answer or not. She would ask how we

all were and the response to all my answers

were either “That’s nice” for things that had

gone well or “Well, what can you expect?” for

anything that had not. As the years passed I

learned never to mention anything that was

not perfect and the conversations became

deep with lies and façades.

“Call,” my father would say, and then would

tell me all about the land and buildings, the

factory owned by my grandmother. He would

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Funeral, Expurgated

explain of the inheritance and how much I

could expect. That is one of my earliest mem-

ories involving her, in truth: his talk of inheritance and wills and the wrangling among him,

his elder sister, and younger brother.

I expected no inheritance. I never did. But

I called and visited anyway because it was

right to do so. I brought the children against

their protests to sit in the uncomfortable,

hard chairs, avoid the expensive antiques.

I do have some earlier memories of her and

my grandfather. Some. I think of these as we

drive to Delray on 95 and then the turnpike.

The long childhood drive from New Jersey.

Perth Amboy or Somerset. Interminable to

a four-year-old, a five-year-old. Up to Rock-

land County, New York. To a large house on

a hill. Steep, shallow slate steps up to a door

on a wide porch. A kitchen door that swung

either way. A closet with a door in the back

and, behind that door, steep steps of stone

through a narrow wood stairwell leading up

to the attic and books. I sat up there, think-

ing I was in a secret place. It smelled of mold

from the wooden walls, from the slate steps,

the books. Moist and dank like a cave. Dark

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Adam Byrn Tritt

and quiet above the house, feeling I was

beneath it all. Today, I recognize that scent,

that specific smell of mold from old books

and wood. I smell it in caves. It is a comfort

I cannot express and I don’t understand com-

ing from the deepest part of the human brain,

deep from the limbic system; the scent is

warm and comfortable. My fondest memory

of my grandmother is the smell of mold.

It was in this house, my mother told me

again and again, that she was offered ten

thousand dollars to stop dating my father.

Perhaps she should have taken it. It was in

this house that my aunt, my father’s older sis-

ter, accused my mother of wanting nothing

from them but money. A strange accusation

considering she could have taken the ten

thousand and still dated my father but did

not. My mother responded by slapping her.

That is all I know of that house.

My grandmother came from Austria. That

is nearly all I know of my grandmother. She

had money. She owned a furniture factory,

and she came from Austria.

At some point they moved to Israel. Then

they moved to Delray, Florida, into a condo.

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Funeral, Expurgated

My father would go up often on errands of a

surreptitious nature. Anytime my grandfa-

ther wanted to buy something, he would have

to ferret the money away and slip it to my

father. Then my father would buy it and bring

it over as a gift. A computer. A boombox. All

were “gifts” from my father.

If I were out with my father, regardless of

the reason or destination, I would have to be

quiet if my grandparents called on the cell

phone. I do not know why this is. My father

would mouth silent words. I cannot see well

enough to read lips. He would not repeat

what he said, ever, in any audible form, so still I have no idea what he was telling me.

If we, my father and I, my parents and I, all

of us and my children—regardless of the

combination—if my father was there and we

were going out to dinner, to a store, and his

parents called, he would lie about our loca-

tion or destination. He would tell me later his

mother was never to know we spent money.

How did she think my father’s house was fur-

nished? Where did she think the multiple

matching computers or identical matching

half-dozen cell phones and the latest of what-

45

Adam Byrn Tritt

ever gadget was hot came from? She could

not know money was spent and any money

spent was a secret. Things purchased for my

grandfather became tangible constant lies.

Their condo was full of them. Nothing was

his unless it was a gift.

Their relationships seemed always to con-

tain this evasion. My father and his father.

My father and grandfather and grandmother.

Grandmother and grandfather. By extension,

myself and my grandparents. Money was a

thing to be hidden, not spoken of above a

whisper. In their world, if you showed you

had money, people would give you less. If you

admitted to having spent any, they would

withhold their gifts. From grandfather to

father and I was expected to take my part.

We continue driving south, passing the

Palm Beach County line. West Palm Beach,

Boynton Beach, and it’s time to call my father

and ask where to meet. Get off on Atlantic,

left, Military trail, left. Look for the post

office, left. Into High Point. Second stop sign, left, right. I call my daughter as she asked. She wants to go, for her grandfather. For her

grandmother and for me but not for anyone

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Funeral, Expurgated

else. She will not go until she knows I am

there. I call her and she drives over from not

far away. Boca Raton to Delray. From the

mouth of the rat to the place of the kings.

What does not sound better in Spanish?

I have parked but I do not know which

condo it is. There are eight. Four in one sec-

tion and four in another at right angles. All

identical at this reasonable distance. I call my father to have him come out. I see him emerge

from a corner unit and immediately begin to

mouth words I cannot see.

He seems OK. I hug him and we enter the

condo.

Once in I start to say hello. So does Alek.

One by one. There is my uncle and his wife,

Miral, a woman I have always liked. There is

my aunt, Suki. There are some people I do

not know. There is my mother. There is Erika,

the caretaker, asking people if they want cof-

fee, looking more after my mother than seems

anyone else; Erika is the most animated per-

son in the room and, other than my mother

and myself, her French accent is the only

speech that does not sound like New York.

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Adam Byrn Tritt

There is my grandfather in the corner. My

father is in the hallway mouthing words. I

think he is telling me to say hello to everyone.

Who can tell?

There is talk of the rabbi. Talk of the can-

tor. Who will do the service? My uncle is in

from New Jersey. My aunt from Israel. My

parents from down the road. Arrangements?

No, it seems little has been done. A cantor

has been called. Or a rabbi. I hear both terms

over and over and she is due to arrive soon,

was met with last night and is coming to help

make arrangements.

They should be simple. A Jewish body is

watched until it is in the ground. Prayers are

said over it. My aunt and uncle are discuss-

ing the rules and traditions. I know as much

about these as my uncle, and more than my

aunt who claims to know all and makes up

what she does not, usually with a fanciful

mixture of myth and absurdity.