Page 96 of This Is How It Started
“You didn’t make him happy?”
“I made him happy, and he made me happy. And then we didn’t,” she says, a wry smile lifting her lips. “This may come as a big surprise to you, but I’m not always easy. And your father...don’t get me started.”
“But don’t you think you could’ve rediscovered each other again if Dad hadn’t died? I just don’t understand how you could toss away a grand love like that. You and Dad were together since you were kids. He was your one. Brooke was just a footnote.”
“Not a footnote, Rachel. She was your father’s grand love for the man he’d become. I was his grand love for the man he used to be, the man I fell madly, deeply in love with. People change, circumstances change. It doesn’t mean we don’t cherish the past, but we move on to the future.” She probes me with a look, letting me know we’re not just talking about her and my dad anymore.
But I’m not ready to let the topic of this new side of my mother go. “Why did you let him buy you out of the house? You loved that house. You made that house.”
“Uuck.” She makes a guttural sound when she says it, like she just got off the boat from Russia, and tosses her head. “It was too much house. Even before your father and I split up, I wanted to sell it. You guys were gone, we were empty nesters, and I wanted a new project. Something different, something exciting. I now realize I wanted something I wasn’t getting from my marriage. Anyway, I tried to talk your father into selling, buying a pied-á-terre in the city, so we could still be close to the three of you, and a fixer-upper in Tahoe, a home base for when your father retired. He wouldn’t hear of it. He’d become so attached to that house he couldn’t see outside its walls. I could’ve been spiteful and fought him for it, but I would’ve only been spiting myself. I’ll give you and Brooke credit for turning the house into a business. Otherwise, it becomes an albatross. A symbol of how much love you can put into something and discover in the end that it didn’t fulfil you as much as you thought it would or should.”
I motion to my mother to elevate her hip, and I go to the kitchen for a new ice pack. I contemplate telling her about Beth Hardesty but nix the idea. This is her night for confessions, not mine. Besides, I’m still trying to absorb everything she’s told me, everything that was right in front of my eyes, but I didn’t see.
“What about Tahoe?” I ask, placing the pack on her hip. “Is that still an option?”
Mom does a 360 around her glamorous living room, so different from the Queen Anne on Vallejo. “Maybe.” She takes my hand. “Anything is possible.”
Chapter 34
Chicago
If Josh were still alive, he’d be thrilled to be held in memory at B’nai Israel. The synagogue is an architectural marvel, all concrete, glass and wood lattice. It’s almost ostentatious in its sparsity. It has none of the stained glass and ornateness you would expect from a place of worship.
The sanctuary is a light-filled, round room with the bema in the middle instead of in the front, like in most synagogues. The windows, walls of plate glass, look out onto gardens of various varieties of fescue grass. And the ceiling is made from a series of wooden slats that appear to undulate like an ocean wave. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Raj, Doris and Vivian, the only members of grief group who could make it on such short notice, greet me with hugs and kisses. Brooke borrowed a wheelchair from the ER and has taken it upon herself to be my mother’s keeper. I’ve decided to let those two deal with each other on their own and to stop running interference.
Josie’s parents are here and have seated themselves next to Josie and Hannah. Adam brought me so I wouldn’t have to drive myself. Before we came in, in a signature Adam move, he tried to talk me into smoking a joint with him.
Now, I wish I had, or at least lingered in the car.
The room is filling with congregants, and I find myself staring out to the gardens, disassociating. That’s why I don’t hear Campbell come up behind me until he brushes a light kiss against my neck. Adam must have told him. I didn’t invite him because it seems unfaithful to Josh. Unfaithful to both of them. The whole point of today is to celebrate Josh’s life and to reflect on how his death has changed me. How my soul is different now. I don’t want Campbell to distract me from that.
I turn to him. “Thank you for coming.”
He nods. “I better find a seat. The place is filling up fast.” Before he leaves, he slips his hand in mine and gives it a squeeze. When he lets go, I feel so empty inside that I want to pull him back. Instead, I turn toward the bema and stare out the window again.
The B’nai Israel staff has offered to video tape the service and send me a link that I can send to the Ackermanns. In all the hoopla over Mom’s fall, I forgot to light the yahrtzeit candle last night at sunset. This morning, I raced to the grocery store and bought a candle, then snapped a picture for the Ackermanns of it lit. Hopefully, they’ll be none the wiser.
The rabbi starts the service. Today’s sermon is coincidentally about grief. I reflect on the last year, about how in the beginning, the pain of losing Josh was unbearable. It has subsided over time but is always there, like a dull throbbing that never goes away. There are still nights while I’m dazed from sleep that I reach for him. And mornings when I start to tell him something and remember he’s not here.
By the time the rabbi gets to calling off the names of the dead, including Josh’s, and starts to deliver the mourner’s kaddish, I have disappeared into a world of memories. Memories of Josh.
“Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba b’alma di v’ra chir’utei; v’yamlich malchutei b’hayeichon u-v’yomeichon, uv’hayei d’chol beit Yisrael, ba-agala u’vi-z’man kariv, v’imru amen,” the rabbi says.
“Amen.”
“Magnified and sanctified is the great name of God throughout the world, which was created according to divine will. May the rule of peace be established speedily in our time, unto us and unto the entire household of Israel.”
“Amen.”
“I’ve got the world on a string...sittin’ on a rainbow...what a world, what a life, I’m in love!” The song rings in my head and I smile, my heart so full that I can feel it bursting from my chest.
It’s as if I can sense Josh sitting beside me, wearing one of his fedoras, whistling the tune while snapping his fingers like Sinatra or Sammy Davis Jr.
“Take care, my love,” I whisper.
After the service, we walk out into a beautiful August day. No fog, only glorious sunshine. Even the temperature is balmy with a slight breeze coming off the bay.
