The Beautiful Possible (19 page)

The car is thick with silence.

“Earth to Abba!” calls Maya.

Sol turns to her and faintly smiles.

“Your friend is an interesting dresser,” she says.

Sol stares at the road and doesn’t respond. Here comes his haze of moodiness, she thinks. The capsule of sadness that she can’t identify or name. She begins to say something and then stops herself. She reaches into her bag for headphones, clasps them on her ears, and leans her head against the window.

After they pull into the driveway, Sol turns to Maya. He tenderly takes her cheeks in his hands and lays a kiss on her forehead.

Rosalie sits at the kitchen counter, the phone cord wrapped around her arm, wincing as she listens to Walter sob. He had phoned right after Sol left the apartment. “I wasn’t prepared to meet her today. All these years I longed to see Maya again, with you. Sol didn’t tell me she would be stopping by, and then she arrived and I said the wrong thing and I couldn’t take my eyes off her and stood too close, and now I feel so empty—”

Rosalie gasps. “I’m so sorry. Sol has no idea—”

“Past tense.”

“Are you sure?”

“Your husband isn’t blind. Stop underestimating him.”

“But—”

“He and I go back a long way, Rosalie.”

“But you can’t be sure.”

“Oh, Rosalie. Our daughter is so lovely. I only wish—”

“Please don’t, Walter. Please—”

Maya unpacks her book bag, sings a brief arpeggio, glances at the clock. Can’t they light already, get this little ritual over with so she can do her homework and listen to her new Flora Purim record? Her parents occupy opposite ends of the house: Rosalie at the kitchen counter, holding the phone in her hand; her father sitting in his study, hunched over a book.

She sits on the top stair and calls out, “It’s late! We have to light! Abba? Mom?”

No one answers.

“Mom? Abba?”

I can light without them, she thinks. I can make myself a dismal little Hanukkah party, and then get down to finishing my homework.

Sol emerges and rests a hand on Maya’s shoulder. “It’s time,” he says.

Rosalie walks toward Maya, her eyes puffy and red. The three of them face the clay family menorah. Maya places the pastel candles in their holders, carefully arranging the colors in a patterned sequence. She stands between her parents and begins to recite the blessings and then her father joins in quietly, and then her mother. Sol lights the
shamash
, the server candle, and then uses it to kindle the others. They stand in silence and watch the candles burn down, each adrift in separate glimmering thoughts. Maya tries to guess what her parents could be thinking, what sparks
they see in these delicate flames. Sol once taught her that Hanukkah symbolizes the infinite potential of the human spirit, but she has no idea how the three of them connect to anything beyond this small, sad moment.

She’elah: What binds a constellation of stars?

Teshuvah: An astronomer explains the properties of shared light. A poet ponders the revealed and the concealed. A child dreams of a path she cannot yet see.

January 1987

Sol praises Rosalie for her ongoing class on Hasidic thought, then asks if she can teach something with broader appeal, like tennis.

“After teaching them about the
Mei HaShiloach
, you want me to play tennis with them? I’ve never even held a racket! Don’t you know me anymore?”

“How about a cooking class? You can teach them how to use a wok. Or play cards! Make friends with them somehow. Nathan wants us to become more of a community, raise the bar for membership. Think we’re up to it?”

Rosalie scowls. “Why can’t I teach a real class again?”

“To the same three students? No, sweetheart. That’s not enough.”

Rosalie hosts a weekly mah-jongg game for the Sisterhood, and serves coffee and fresh strawberries because all the women are dieting. As their long nails click against the tea-stained tiles the
women tell Rosalie about impending divorces, ailing parents, wayward children who marry out of the faith. Over the months these talks become laden with details that are conveyed with furtive glances and Rosalie listens to every story, offering bits of practical guidance and occasional Hasidic sayings.

Maya joins her mother and the women at these confessional mah-jongg games. As they talk she folds empty Sweet’N Low packets into perfect squares and builds tiny pink paper houses on the table. Maya ponders what these women seem to be looking for. Serena needs to apply for a passport and move far away from Briar Wood.
She is eager to embrace the world,
Maya thinks. Missy Samuels no longer sleeps with Nathan.
She needs to find surprise in her life and teach it back to him.
Beth, Natalie, and Sue repeat the gossip they overhead at the Cosmos Diner.
They need to feed their hungry imaginations with art.
These women want Rosalie to wake them up, tell them she understands, that she believes—with absolute certainty—that everything in their lives will turn out all right. Maya thinks her mother is too reticent with them, that she could provide more than strawberries, coffee, and an occasional proverb, but she holds back.

At times the house seems to Maya like a palace of countless stories—the ancient ones from the Bible and Talmud that she learns with her father—and the stories the women share over mah-jongg and strawberries. The stories that her mother whispers into the telephone late at night, either to Madeline or to someone else. The love stories in the songs that her parents play—each one a tale of desire set to music. Sometimes Maya drifts off to sleep and imagines that all the yearnings and all the stories that course through the walls of the house are one single
story, and no matter how much she listens, she will never know everything.

Walter calls Rosalie and announces he is going to Bombay on a two-year research grant.

“That’s good,” she says. “I feel less confused when you’re stuck on the other side of the world.”

“It’s better for me too,” he says. “Time passes differently in India.”

“She is growing up so fast.”

“Once I had less sadness,” he says. “Before her.”

Rosalie closes her eyes and imagines Walter in his studio, holding the phone, a sketchbook resting near his bare feet, the sil batta and spice jars lined up like silent witnesses to his youth. His daughter would always be an abstraction to him; he had missed out on all the ordinary moments that marked her childhood—ripped tights and car rides, nut-free cakes and inside jokes, report cards and leaky pens, and at night, the remains of her half-finished milk souring at the bottom of a jelly glass. When Rosalie would drive Maya to her voice lessons in the city, Maya would sing “The Song that Never Ends” in a continuous tedious loop, and just when Rosalie thought she would go mad, Maya was old enough to take the train to her lessons, and Rosalie was alone in the car without the song and without Maya, and she hummed that ridiculous song and made herself weep with longing. Walter had missed out on holding the pudgy fingers that began so tiny and so eager, their potential hushed inside invisible molecules,
until one day Rosalie looked at Maya’s hands and noticed how her small wrists bore the long fingers of a young woman, and she wondered how that happened while the song that never ends never quite ended, until it did.

“Do you have any idea what I used to find at the bottom of her knapsack, Walter?”

“Tell me.”

“Tic Tacs, paper clips, pretzel crumbs, an Origami fortune teller, a troll with pink hair, a stale wad of Silly-Putty, and a barrette made of silver glitter.”

“Significance?”

“Nothing that would seem to matter. Just the details. All the good parts.”

Walter’s voice becomes professorial. “The years tumble for all of us. Those of us who remain.”

“Walter?”

“Yes, darling?”

“I want to make it right for you. Arrange a stopover in New York on your way back from India. Day or night—whenever. I’ll find a way to bring her to the airport. She’s grown taller since you saw her. So lovely, so assured. She’s transcended us in some way. You’ll see soon enough.”

Walter dreads the long flights and hopscotch layovers, yet every time he travels to India he feels as if he is returning to his true home. When he and Paul published their translations of Tagore’s poetry, they co-taught a seminar at Shantiniketan and lectured in New Delhi. His research on cremation introduced
him to Varanasi, a city he has grown to love. But this is Walter’s first return to Bombay. When he walks past the spice markets he looks for a glimpse of his younger self among the throng of tourists. These well-fed Westerners wear saris and kurtas with cameras dangling from their necks. The sound of Hebrew is everywhere; young Israelis storm the markets.

At a silversmith’s stall, Walter sorts through a pile of bracelets and tries to picture Maya’s wrists—how small they seemed. He wonders if her hands would have grown bigger in two years, and what size bracelet would fit her now. He stops a girl who seems to be Maya’s age and asks,
How old are you? Can I see your hands? Do you like silver?
He chooses a small bracelet and mails it to Rosalie with a note:
Please give this to her at the right time.

A week before Passover Rosalie is alone in the house, taping paper to the cabinet shelves. Her forearm is ringed with a roll of masking tape, the unofficial ornament she wears to prepare her kitchen for the ritual reenactment of the Exodus. Each year she explains to the Sisterhood women that it’s best not to ask too many questions about Passover preparation, but rather meditate on every meaningless tear of the masking tape that is not prescribed by law but seems driven by the body’s understanding of tradition
.

The phone rings but Rosalie doesn’t pick up. Just before Passover the congregants call with their picayune questions about how to kasher the handle of a pot and if wine glasses should be soaked in cold water for three days or in warm water for two. They crawl out of the sidewalk with their questions—those who
never inquired about a single aspect of Jewish law, and those who slammed the door in Sol’s face when he would try to gather a minyan on Shabbat morning. Rosalie listens to the sequence of rings and finally answers.

“Rabbi Central, rebbetzin speaking.”

“Is that you, Rosalie? It’s Paul Richardson, Walter’s friend. From the ranch.”

“Paul! Of course. How is your family?”

“Our son Jacob is a father now.”

Rosalie doesn’t respond. She twirls her masking-tape bracelet and glances at the rolls of shelf paper scattered on the floor. This holiday is beyond ridiculous, she thinks. Maybe Paul can invite them to Eden Ranch; the Kerems can hold a karmic seder in the circle of stones they called the amphitheater.

“Listen to me, Rosalie. Last month Walter was hit by a car in Bombay. He was biking on a crowded road and probably sniffed something in the distance and got mired in his thoughts. There were witnesses but no single story.”

Rosalie moans.

“I handled the cremation.”

She slams her arm on the counter, crushing the roll of tape.

“No, Paul. It can’t be—”

“I’m so sorry. I loved him more than I can say.”

“You have no idea—”

“It was way too soon. He crossed over before his time.”

Rosalie drops the phone, lays her head on the countertop and screams into the granite.

“Are you still there, Rosalie?”

She stiffens up, holds the handset to her mouth, and whispers.

“He has a daughter.”

“Yes,” says Paul. “I know.”

Rosalie winds the phone cord tightly around her arm until it bites into her skin, and then loosens it. Why now, when she had finally figured it out? He would have returned from India via New York; she and Maya would have met him at the airport, just as before. But this time Rosalie would tell Maya that this man was important to their family in so many ways. Simple as that. And Maya, such a wise girl, would look at the man she had already met and everything would become perfectly clear.

Rosalie finds a napkin and a pen, and writes:
Walter is gone
. She reads the word
gone
, then x’s out the line, and replaces it with the words he would have used:
Walter has crossed over.
She folds the napkin in half and writes
SOL
on the flap.

She grabs the car keys and without putting on her shoes, drives down the Hutchinson and the Henry Hudson, and parks outside the Seminary building. She sits behind the wheel and sobs, and when she catches her breath she looks up, hoping to see Walter walk out of the building, wearing a green kurta and cloth shoes.
I’ve been waiting, Rosalie. Lower geniza or upper. Both, Walter. I want both. Sol and Walter. Milk and meat. Always both. No limits.

Sol arrives home from a meeting and notices the car is gone. Out shopping, he thinks. A dress for the seder or something new for Maya to wear to all those bat mitzvah parties. Sol would never admit this to Maya or to Rosalie, but compared to other girls her
age, Maya appears dowdy in the calico dresses and chukka boots she wears; she dresses like an Orthodox girl, all buttoned up. Well, he thinks, her time will come.

His enterprising wife left the rolls of shelf paper scattered on the floor, God bless her. The shelves are almost lined, all dressed up for the holiday. The preparations will be finished just in time, as always; the miracle of Passover will be complete. He finds the napkin note on the counter. At first he doesn’t allow himself to recognize the name Walter and then he doesn’t understand why Rosalie wrote
crossed over—
a phrase she never used. But then Sol reads again, quite soberly, and lets the words sink in. He sits on the bottom stair, waiting for tears to come.

The rest of the day and evening Sol drives around Briar Wood, looking for his wife. After a few hours of circling the dark streets, Sol returns home and walks up to Maya’s room. He gazes at his sleeping daughter, kisses her forehead, and leaves. Sol spends the rest of the night weeping silently on the sofa, waiting for Rosalie to return.

Just before dawn, he rises and crosses the parking lot to the shul. He enters the sanctuary and finds Rosalie in a middle row, slightly disheveled, sitting perfectly still. Sol takes the seat directly behind hers and she reaches her hand toward his. When the men arrive for morning services, they linger in the back of the sanctuary, unsure if they should disturb the rabbi and his wife. After a few moments, Rosalie and Sol rise together and walk home, hand in hand.

Later that morning Rosalie marches into the office of Maya’s school.

“I’m signing out my daughter, Maya Kerem.”

“Doctor’s appointment? Death in the family?” asks the secretary.

“No. Yes. Sort of,” mutters Rosalie.

“I’m so sorry.”

Maya trudges in. “Who died? What? Are you serious, Mom?”

“Please come with me, Maya.”

“I can’t. I have chorus practice today and it’s my turn to present my book report and it’s Deena’s birthday and—”

“I signed you out already.”

“Who died?”

“Everyone you know is fine.”

“Then go home. I’ll see you later.”

“I need to be with you.”

“Are you pulling me out of school just because—”

“Yes, Maya. Just because.”

“I used to wish you would pick me up for no reason at all. I once would have wanted this,” she says. “But not today.”

“Please.”

“Where are we going?”

Rosalie drives and Maya fumes silently in the passenger seat. “Can we at least spend our little date at the mall? I need a dress for Deena’s bat mitzvah.”

“Who?”

“Wake up, Mom. Deena. My best friend since second grade. And stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“You keep staring at me.”

The darkened store reeks of overly spiced teen perfume and Led Zeppelin blasts from the sound system. Maya searches for dresses to try on and Rosalie sits in a leather chair, waiting to say what she has no words for. Her head pounds and she shuts her eyes to block out the throbbing music and then opens them to block out the pain. She pushes her fingers onto her eyelids and presses, sealing her eyes shut.

Maya is alone in the dressing room and she feels bereft. Her mother usually follows her inside and replaces the clothes on their hangers. Maya tries on a simple flowered dress, looks in the mirror, and pouts. Too childish. She wore a calico dress to her own bat mitzvah and to every party since, but Deena is her best friend and she wants to look more sophisticated this time—elegant, fancy.
Dressed
, as her mother would say.
You should look put together. Like a young lady.

She tries on a black cocktail dress with spaghetti straps and rubs her hands over her hips. Her father would never approve of her wearing this to her best friend’s bat mitzvah. It’s about time, she thinks, admiring her reflection in the mirror. Her friends wear slinky dresses and heels to these parties and Maya has been slow to catch on. Enough, she thinks. Her mother is too distracted to refuse her and her father would never say no to her. He never does. She is his best girl, his occasional chavrusa.
Don’t you want to learn Talmud with someone your own age?
she once asked him.
You get this
, he said.
Learning with you makes me feel young again,
like everything is possible because we can interpret these ancient words together. We are creating a bridge, Maya. One day you will understand.