Intentions (24 page)

“We’ve been fighting so much,” she says.

“True,” he says. “But we’ve also been under a lot of stress.”

“It’s my fault,” says Mom. “Dan, I really think she saw the rabbi kiss me in the driveway.”

I wait for my dad to shout, yell, walk out, slam the door. But he says, “Well even if she did, what does that have to do with shoplifting and planting it on Alexis? I don’t think you can take the blame for this one, Evie.”

He knows? He knew? Wow. When did she tell him?

Mom says something I don’t hear, and then Dad: “She did something really wrong, and it’s nobody’s fault but her own.”

“I thought I knew her, I really did,” says my mother.

“I know,” says my father. “Me too.”

I want to die.

“You did know me,” I whisper. “You still do.”

There is nothing more from their room. I hope this means they’re hugging each other, which is what I would like more than anything in the world. A hug.

But I guess I’m not going to get it. Not now. Not anytime soon.

I pour myself a glass of water in the kitchen. Well, it’s over. There’s nothing more for me to do. It’s done.

And then the phone rings.

I hear Dad pick up in their bedroom. I pick up in the kitchen.

Who is it? The police? Alexis’s mom?

“Another massive attack … lack of oxygen … severe brain damage … slowed respiration … matter of hours …”

Dad hangs up and so do I.

They walk into the kitchen and see me standing there.

Mom looks shell-shocked. Dad has his arm around her, holding her up.

“You heard?” he says. “Please call Uncle Joe. We’re going to the hospital.”

“I’m coming with you.”

They don’t say no.

I get into the backseat of Dad’s car and call my uncle. I reach him in Kansas City; he’s traveling for work. He won’t make it here in time. He starts to cry, and I pass the phone to Mom. She talks to him for a minute and then hands me back the phone.

“Thank you,” she says.

“Thank you for letting me come,” I say, and she starts sobbing.

We get to the hospital and park, and as we’re walking up to the front door, Mom grabs me in a big hug. She doesn’t say anything, but she hugs me tight. Walking in, Dad puts his arm around me.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

When we get up to the ICU, the nurse in charge tells us they’ve moved Grandma to a private room. Mom and Dad talk to a doctor. Mom signs papers.

Then, while we wait, they disconnect everything—all the tubes, monitors, oxygen, everything. There is nothing left but for her to die.

Mom sits on one side of her bed and holds her hand. I sit on the other and do the same. Mom talks to her, tells her how much she loves her. She doesn’t cry while she talks; I don’t know how she does that. I won’t be able to. So I just stroke Grandma’s arm for a while. Her skin is still so soft, and she is warm.

I am going to miss her so much.

The thing is, she doesn’t look like herself at all, not even her recent self. She is so tiny, so pale, so old, so lifeless. I had been losing her for a long time, ever since Grandpa died. This lady here, this was not my grandma.

But she was my grandma, and I need to tell her that.

“Can I have a minute alone with her?” I ask my parents.

“I don’t know, Rachel,” says Dad, looking worried.

“It’s fine,” says Mom. “She can handle it.” And she and Dad walk out of the room, their arms around each other.

I know I will remember the next few moments for the rest of my life. I tell my grandmother how much I love her. I say all of my favorite things about her, my most wonderful memories. And then I promise, “I will keep you alive, Grandma. I will tell my children about you.”

We stay through the night. I sleep a little, but Dad and Mom don’t. And then, just as the sun comes up, as the room gets lighter and the morning noises of the hospital start, Grandma breathes heavily a few times, gasps, and then—

nothing.

“Mommy!” cries my mother. “Don’t go, oh no!” And she buries her head on the bed and sobs. It’s excruciating. But I force myself to stay. Dad puts his arms around Mom and strokes her, says nothing, kisses the top of her head.

I look at Grandma.

I thought she was gone before, but she is really gone now.

For a while I pace in the waiting room while Mom and Dad pack up her things, talk to the doctors, call the undertaker.

I am useless. Not Mom. I can’t believe how together she is.

I can’t imagine the world without my mother.

I tell them I’m going out for a walk, and I run down the stairs, down, down, down, all six flights, into the lobby. It’s really early in the morning, but the place is bustling, full of nurses coming in for shifts, people coming in for tests.… I run out into the parking lot, sobbing, screaming. I run, scream, nobody stops me, says “Are you OK?” I guess they figure someone I love has died.

I run. I run and run. I could run forever.

And then I can’t anymore. I can’t breathe. Literally breathless, I sit down on a curb. There must be some air here somewhere. I close my eyes, put my head between my knees in case I’m going to faint.

I breathe in and out, in and out. Slowly. Like I am giving myself mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. CPR. But it’s not the breaths that are important. It’s the pounding on the heart. That’s what they told us in a school assembly last year.

So I pound on my heart, like we do at Yom Kippur. Pardon me. Forgive me. Grant me atonement.

I have no idea where I am. I have to call my dad. But just then a car pulls up, the SUV I love to hate.

“Do you want a ride?” the rabbi asks me, leaning his head out the window.

“With you?” I say. “No way. No effin’ way.”

He turns off the engine, opens the door. Gets out of the car. Walks slowly toward me and sits down next to me.

I inch away from him. I have breath again, enough to say,
“I know what you did, and you are not going to deny it. I heard you.”

“Rachel,” he says.

“I hate you,” I whisper. I look up. He is looking at me, not away. “I hate you!” I say again.

The rabbi sighs.

“I’m sorry about your grandmother,” he says.

“You know?”

He nods. “Your father called. I went to the hospital.…”

“To be with my mother?” I say. “To be with my mother?” I am kind of screaming now.

“To be with all of you. That’s my job. And they said you’d gone out for a walk, so I came looking for you.”

I don’t have my phone with me.

“Why you, not my father?”

“Your mother wanted him to stay with her.”

I let that sink in. A glimmer of hope.

“So that’s your job, going to the hospital?”

“Sure. Part of it.”

“And what’s the other part? Screwing women you’re not married to? In the sanctuary? On the
bima
?”

He stares at me.

“What was your
kavanah
with that, Rabbi?”

“What?” he asks.

I wasn’t going to do this, I wasn’t going to confront him, but here he is and here I am and I guess I’m doing it.

“Come on. Don’t play dumb with me. I heard you. One evening before class. You did it with some girl who was going to get married—”

“What? I didn’t do anything—”

“Do
not
deny it.”

He shakes his head, sighs. Looks at me and then quickly away. “You saw that?”

Heard it. Whatever. “Yup.”

“Oy vey. Oh, God. Oh, God, what have I done? Poor Rachel. Poor, poor Rachel, what have I done to you?”

I want to say, You ruined my life, but I know it’s not true. “You’ve made a big mess of things,” I tell him. “You’ve hurt a lot of people, I’m sure. I know you hurt me. You made me—” I don’t know what to say except “old.”

“Oh, God, forgive me,” he mumbles, his head in his hands.

“Yes,” I say, “you better atone, Rabbi. Ask that God you love so much for forgiveness.”

He bows his head, and I see that he is bald on top, and in spite of myself I laugh. “You’ve got no hair on top. Is that why you usually wear a
kipah
?”

“You got me,” he says, laughing through his tears. “This is why I’ve always loved you, Rachel, because you can do that—Oh, don’t let me have ruined you. Please! Please!”

“You haven’t ruined me,” I tell him. “You haven’t.”

“I screwed up,” he says.

“Screwed is the right word,” I say. “You are really a fucker,” I say, furious at him. I am not going to let him win me back.

He bristles and gets all rabbi-like. “Rachel!”

“Don’t give me that,” I say. “You have lost your right to be holy and superior with me.”

He nods and frowns. “OK, you’re right. But could you stop with the language, please? Please?”

We sit for a while without talking, and I calm down. He is just a man. He’s not a god. Or God’s best friend. Or God’s best work. I will have to live with that. So will he, I guess.

“I’ve made some really big mistakes, Rachel,” he says. “I’m so sorry you had to see that.”

“If you didn’t want to hurt me—”

He hears it as a question. “No, not you. You of all people.”

“
If
you didn’t want to hurt me, then why did you have an affair with my mother? Why did you
ruin
my parents’ marriage?”

“No, no! Your mother and I, we didn’t have an affair—”

“I saw you kissing her. In my driveway.”

“We didn’t,” he says into his hands. “I swear it. Your mother and I talked a lot. A lot. We kissed only that once. I wanted more, but she didn’t.”

“Why?”

“You’ll have to ask her.”

I sit there for a long time. The rabbi sits next to me. Doing nothing else. Just being with me.

“My grandma died,” I say. “I am going to miss her so much.”

He nods. “I know you will, Rachel. But she’s at peace now, finally,” he says, and I know that in this case that is the truth.

After a while, I say, “Can you take me to my parents?”

“Sure. Let me find out where they are.”

He stands and calls my dad. I hear such a sadness in his voice, and I wonder if it’s for me, for my grandmother, or for what he’s about to go through. My heart—I cannot stop it—my heart goes out to him. “They’re going back home,” he tells me.

“Listen,” I say. “Before we go. It’s Adam. He knows about you
and the cheating. He’s thinking about doing something crazy. Will you talk to him? Right away? Before he does something really bad?”

The rabbi sits down next to me again. He sighs. “I never meant to hurt him.”

“Well, you did!” I say. “You really did. And he wants to get revenge. I think he really could do something terrible.”

“Oh my God. I am such a—I’ll talk to him right away. I never meant for him to bear the brunt of our—I love that boy so much. Thank you for telling me, Rachel.”

“He’s really a good guy, Adam is. Or he could be—but …”

The rabbi nods, looks at me. “Thank you. Really. I’ll talk to him. He’ll be fine. I promise.”

“OK,” I say, hoping I can believe him. And after a few minutes, I ask the rabbi to take me home. “Please?”

“Yes, of course.”

I get in the front seat, but we drive in silence.

“What am I going to do now?” I ask the rabbi as he pulls into the driveway.

“You’ll grieve,” he says. “You’ll grieve for what you’ve lost. And then you’ll move on.”

We both know he’s not talking only about Grandma.

CHAPTER 35

NEW LEAF

We’re having the funeral in two days, waiting for all the out-of-town relatives to arrive. This is not what you’re supposed to do when you’re Jewish. You’re supposed to get them buried right away, the very next day. But there are people from far away who really want to come.

I’m sure God will understand.

Dad’s a whirlwind of activity, cleaning up the yard and the house. I notice that every once in a while he finds Mom and gives her a hug, a kiss, a cup of tea. And this morning he woke me up without singing but then came and stood by my bed.

“I love you, Rachel,” he said, and kissed me on the head.

The doorbell keeps ringing. People are dropping off food. Delivery guys are bringing flowers, fruit baskets. Mrs. Philips is in the kitchen organizing everything. She keeps shooing Mom and me out when we try to help.

In a quiet moment I go to my room and call Alexis. I have to give it one more try. Her phone rings, but she does not pick up.

“Rachel, can you come here?” Mom calls from her bedroom.

“Uh-oh,” I say when I see the mess.

“Yup. It’s all I could think of to do.”

She’s got all her clothes heaped on the bed. All of them. Her closet is empty; her drawers are open and most of them are empty, too. Like I said, Uh-oh. People are going to start arriving soon. We can’t leave it like this. Mom goes through her clothes every once in a while, and I help her, but I’ve never seen her do
this
.

She usually ends up with two or more big plastic bags full of clothing that we take to New Leaf, the battered-women’s shelter.

I move a few clothes to one side so I can sit on the bed, leaning up against the headboard on Dad’s side. Mom’s standing up at her dresser, her back to me, rifling through her scarf drawer.

“I know I had the matching scarf to that dress somewhere.” She points with her head, and I know she means that striped/flowered/paisley peasant thing that was in for a nanosecond a few years ago.

“You’ll find it,” I tell her.

“It always gets worse before it gets better,” she says.

“Tell me about it,” I say, and then sigh.

She turns around and looks at me. “How about you tell me about it,” she says.

I shake my head.

“It’s time,” she says. “For us to talk.”

I’m. Not. Ready.

“How about this, Mom? Let me help you with the clothes. People will be here so soon. Just tell me what you’re definitely giving away and I’ll put it in bags.”

“That’s the trouble, I’m not sure. I’m not sure who I want to be, what clothes I want to wear.…”

“Sounds familiar,” I say. “But aren’t you old enough to, you know, know?”

“I haven’t grown up yet, I guess.”