The Beautiful Possible (22 page)

Rosalie follows the sequence of their words, alights on some details, and lets others slip through. She is weary now—too much weed and too little sleep. They have turned out decently, she thinks. Charlie and Philip are kind; Maya is radiant. Despite it all, she passed down the generational gift and kept the story alive. This fact fills her with solace. The pleasure she feels as her children surround her is enough for now, more than she could ever want. In their company Rosalie forgets that there may have been something more she had intended to say. Charlie’s, Philip’s, and Maya’s voices fill the rooms of her casa and she bursts with joy. Everything she wanted to give her children has been received; everything she had intended to say is already known.

May 2003

Maya opens her eyes in the chilly tent before dawn. She and Jase are in Fahnstock State Park on a Wednesday morning, testing out an overnight retreat program that Jase calls The Wonderful and Wild Weekday Shabbat. She rests her cheek on Jase’s back, sniffs the curls that cascade down his neck, basks in his radiant warmth. So sweet, she thinks. Leave it to Jase to suggest a weeknight camping trip because he dreamt of waking up in a field of morning dew.

Jase reaches for her hand. He is wide awake, beaming his flashlight on the last pages of Heschel’s
Man Is Not Alone.
Maya wraps her arms around his torso.

“A little awe and wonder before breakfast?”

“It’s always time for awe and wonder.”

Maya smiles. “How could anyone become a rabbi without a little Heschel in his book bag?”

“It’s great stuff. The deepest of the deep.” He closes the book and pulls her close.

“Talk to me,” she says.

“About what?”

“Give me something fun to chew on. A line of poetry. Or make up a she’elah and I’ll answer with a teshuvah
.
It can be about anything; it can be about sex! I speak the same language as you, Rabbi Jase! Different school, same books, same crazy-holy-weird thing that most of the world won’t ever understand. So give me your best.”

“That I can do.” He cradles her hip.

“With words, sweetie.”

He begins to hum a wordless Hasidic melody.

“I’m not in the mood for a
niggun
,” she says. “Not when I want to have a conversation. Why on earth did you become a rabbi if you don’t love to talk?”

Maya ruffles Jase’s hair. How did she land the least intellectual rabbi of her generation? They met at a Jewish food conference, flirted over lentil soup and torn chunks of spelt challah, cracked jokes about eating cholent cooked with organically grown meat. After the other guests retired to their rooms, she and Jase strolled the perimeter of a mountain lake, kissed in the faint glow of tea lights scattered around a bench. If her father knew Jase, he would be incredulous; he would have wanted Maya to find a mate who could be a true chavrusa, a co-traveler in the galaxy of texts. A chavrusa like his. A strange man full of surprises. The barefoot man in the apartment. Someone like that. Where had their flights taken them, and why was her Jase so flat, so sweet, so unstrange and so unsurprising?

“We should study together,” she says. “I’ll help you out. When we get back to New York, okay?”

Jase kisses her, rubs his hand down the length of her torso, circles, hovers. Why does she even care that he can’t talk philosophy? What use are all those words anyway? He is so good to her, his touch so perfect: not strange, not surprising, yet always just right.

“You spoil me,” she says.

“I intend to.”

“What time is it? Shit. I’ll miss the Mourner’s Kaddish.”

“We can still make it, Maya. I ran MapQuest and there’s a shul about ten miles from here.”

“Never mind. I can miss it for once.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. I’ll be mourning my mother all my life. And she wouldn’t want me to leave your toasty sleeping bag to find a shul where I could race through the Mourner’s Kaddish, which has nothing to do with her anyway.” Maya laughs.

“What’s so funny?”

“My mother wouldn’t have cared if I recited Kaddish.”

“But it matters to you. We can make it in time.”

Maya shakes her head. “I’ll meditate instead. A good sit in the woods to honor her memory.” She smiles.

“So we’re staying.”

“Yes. For now.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” He kisses her belly, dives his face between her thighs.

Is this what Rosalie would have wanted for her? Maya wishes she could meet her mother at a nearby diner for breakfast, share a plate of pancakes, tell her how her wilderness rabbi is excellent in bed but she’s just not sure she wants him on the other side of her Shabbat table when she is forty and fifty and sixty, the two of
them dissecting the flavors of the latest artisinal kosher cheeses at the farmer’s market.

Be careful, Maya
, her mother would have said.
Listen to your heart.

She begins to cry.

“Maya?”

“It’s too much for me now. I can’t—”

“But last night—”

“We were stoned last night, Jase. And it was great. With you it’s always great. Unconditionally. I just don’t know—”

“It’s okay.”

Jase turns, clutches his book in his arms as if he is a small boy and
Man Is Not Alone
is his teddy bear.

“Can we go now?”

“You just said you wanted to stay, meditate in the woods. A gentle, mindful practice will center you—”

“Of course it will, Jase. But I don’t want to get centered or be mindful or get in touch with my feelings or find my soul or travel the holy path to some sustainable future. I just want to go home. I want to check my email and call my brothers and think about my mother and sleep in my own bed.”

Maya looks at Jase and takes in his stubble, his elegant nose, his gracious lips, the way he wants to absorb the words he reads without having to interpret them for himself. So earnest. So sincere. So wrong for her. She just buried her mother and he keeps asking if she can join him in Jerusalem when he begins his year-long fellowship in Jewish leadership.
No
, she says.
Not yet. Maybe one day. Or maybe not
.

And Maya doesn’t know. She buried her mother only four months ago, back in Briar Wood, as Rosalie had specified. She stood in the cemetery, right next to her father’s grave, and delivered a eulogy that seemed so flawed and so sketchy, so distant from the way she understood her mother. After the service, a well-preserved Missy Samuels embraced Maya and thanked her for speaking so truthfully. “Your mother was my role model, my inspiration.” Bev leaned on her walker and wept. “The shul was my home,” she said. “Your parents made my life complete.” Maya and her brothers lingered at the graves and the three of them lay pebbles on top of Sol’s and Lenny’s headstones, and she stayed behind for an extra moment and kissed the headstones too.

“It’s okay,” says Jase. “I get it.”

Maya grabs a sweater and pants and rolls up their single sleeping bag.

“Maybe you met me at the wrong time.”

“After my year in Jerusalem we’ll see. Maybe that will be the right time.”

“For what, Jase?”

“We could live together. Or get married.”

“I adore you, sweetie,” she says. “And I don’t want to marry anyone.”

Jase packs up his clothes, his volume of Heschel, the banjo he is teaching himself to play. He takes out the embroidered bag that holds his tallit and tefillin, and steps outside the tent to face east. Maya leans on her elbow and peeks out, watching him drape his rainbow-striped tallit over his shoulders with surgical precision. He wraps the tefillin on his left arm, tight enough to leave indentations
that will linger on his skin all morning. She stares at him as she once stared at her father when he davened. Just like Sol, Jase doesn’t need a prayer book because he knows the morning prayers by heart. He glances back at her and smiles, just as her father smiled at her mother.
You get me. You get this. We are in this together. Stay with me.

She closes her eyes and imagines the house in Briar Wood when she was small, how her parents lived in separate universes in the big house—her father leaning over the Talmud, her mother whispering into the telephone—and came together at night to listen to their favorite records.
Fly me to the moon. Dance me to the end of love. I say a little prayer for you.
She would spy them from the doorway and smile at the sight of them, yet her parents seemed to live behind a veil. So much was inaccessible to her, just like she would always be inaccessible to Jase. He would assume that the crazy-holy-weird thing they shared would make them true soul mates, but it would only be an illusion. He would never understand the depths of her imagination, and in time their delicious, organic Shabbat meals would be tinged with sadness. He would sustain her with good sex for a while, and then she would feel alone.

I’m a piece of work, Jase, she thinks. You deserve a sweet rabbi-loving girl, a hippie chick who wants to fuck you in mountain huts and whose brain does not careen into imaginative overdrive. A girl who will sit beside you at Jewish food conferences and laugh at your cholent jokes. A girl who won’t mind that you never talk about books, that you can’t play the she’elah-teshuvah game. Not a woman who wants to create something bigger than a
rabbinate, more encompassing than a single marriage—whatever that might look like.
It sounds like a recipe for being a lost soul
, her mother would have said.
Better you should stay with the sweet rabbi who pleases you in some way, at least for a while.

They drive home in silence, listening to NPR and old Dylan CDs. When they pull up in front of her building, Maya hesitates.

“I’ll call you,” she says. “Promise.”

She lets herself into the apartment, hops into bed, and falls into a long dreamless sleep. When she wakes up the next afternoon she feels as if she has been hibernating for a year. She brushes her teeth and plays her messages: three from Jase and one from Madeline in San Miguel, insisting she come down to visit. All her life Maya had imagined Madeline as a tiny British elf who lived inside a telephone wire, accessible only to her mother. And now.

Just for a few days, pussycat. Tell me when you’re free and I’ll book the flight. My treat.

June 2003

Maya rests her head against the window of the Flecha Amarilla bus that careens out of Mexico City. She listens to the tourists chatter about San Miguel de Allende’s art galleries and she envies their allegiance to the town where her mother took her last breaths, a town that Maya identifies with grief. The man sitting next to her reeks of tequila and has fallen asleep on her arm. This is her mother’s bus, the one that brought Rosalie to the last home she would have.

She tries out her game: Everyone-Is-Beautiful-on-This-Bus. This man who drools on my arm. The chicken that escapes from a girl’s hands. The gringo who won’t stop talking about the first-run films he just viewed in New York. The gringa with the Texas accent who won’t stop talking about the gardener who peed into her fountain. Did her mother lean her head against this same window and did this same drooling man lean against her mother’s arm? Maya wants to feel her mother again, touch everything she touched, without Madeline intruding on her private sorrow.

The bus enters the town and parks in front of a cantina. Maya nudges the sleeping man off her arm, retrieves her bag from the shelf overhead. She wishes she could unspool time and this moment could be the same moment of arrival she shared with her brothers only a year ago, just before breakfast. Wasn’t there a theory of time somewhere that allowed for this? Go to the same place and fold yourself back into a scene that has already ended?

Maya steps off the bus and spots a tall, wrinkled woman with cropped white hair and cat-eye glasses waving in the distance.

“Yoo-hoo! Maya Kerem!”

Maya winces. No one has ever shouted her name quite this loud. Her mother’s best friend sounds like a British cheerleader. Madeline wipes away a tear, then folds Maya into her arms. “You look so much like her,” she says.

“I know.”

Madeline picks up Maya’s bag. “Let me carry that. We’ll have lunch and then you’ll go to your hotel.”

Maya only wants to visit her mother’s casa—now rented to another expat—and summon the sound of her mother’s voice. She would ask to go inside and stand at the kitchen sink but this time she would not cry with the anticipation of loss; she would listen closely for an echo.

Madeline leads Maya through the jardín, stopping to greet every white-haired gringa who carries a basket filled with fresh fruit and books checked out from the town’s English library. They could be in Briar Wood, thinks Maya. They could be in Jerusalem. These people could be living anywhere, only they chose Mexico, which allows them to retire on social security, bask in the dry
heat, and gather for afternoon mojitos at the local art galleries. No Spanish required.

“Don’t you love it here?”

“It has its appeal,” says Maya.

“I have an extra room if you’d like to hang out for awhile,” says Madeline. “You could help me run my little press, join the Torah study group. Harvey would be honored to have a real rabbi as his partner.”

“Thanks anyway, but no. I have a lot of decisions to make and I can’t figure it all out from here.”

“Indecision is the privilege of youth. You eat vegetarian, right?”

“Sure.”

“I found a new place. El Colibri. Plenty for you to eat.”

Before they open their menus a flamenco guitarist approaches their table and begins to play. Madeline gives him a few pesos and shoos him off.
“Mas tarde,”
she mutters and her eyes follow him until he leaves the dining room.

“The water’s purified, Maya. Perfectly safe to drink.”

Maya raises her glass and takes a sip.

“Tell me, sweet pea. What’s going on with you now?”

“I’m not exactly working and I’m not sure about my boyfriend, not sure if he’s right for me. I’m not sure about anything. A common rabbinic dilemma.”

Maya wishes the guitarist would return to their table, divert them with a flamenco.

“Your mother and I knew a French kabbalist in Jerusalem
named Madame Sylvie. She parceled out little astonishments, direction signals for understanding the soul. Sometimes they were direct and other times obtuse.”

Maya squints, vaguely recalling the old woman in a Jerusalem courtyard who gave her lemon cake. “I’ll figure things out on my own,” she says.

Madeline glances at the menu. “I always order the vegetable enchilada with brown rice.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You’ll pick and save the rest for later, sweet pea.”

Maya listens to Madeline place the order in perfect Spanish. She is good at this, she thinks. I feel as if I’m five years old again.

“Truths are skittish,” blurts Madeline, suddenly.

“Huh?”

“I had great love for your mother.”

“Thank you for taking such good care of her at the end.”

“She was my best friend.”

“That’s why I’m here,” says Maya.

Madeline folds her napkin into tiny squares, then unfolds it and folds it back.

“His name was Walter Westhaus.”

Madeline’s voice is barely audible.

“Excuse me?”

“Wal-ter West-haus.” Madeline draws out the syllables.

“A friend of yours?”

“Not
my
friend. Not exactly.”

“Wait! Westhaus wrote
Ordinary Sacred
. I own that book.”

“It’s a classic.”

Maya pictures the dog-eared copy she kept on her bookshelf when she was in rabbinical school, her random marginal jottings, the blurry postage-stamp photograph of its author on the back. That book was once so important to her and now she can’t remember a single line of it.

“An important work in the field.”

Maya closes her eyes and waits.

“They were in love.”

“Who was?”

“Rosalie and Walter. Your mother and—”

“My Rosalie? When? With
him
? You can’t be—”

Madeline lowers her voice. “Yes. Rosalie. Your mother.”

“Before my father?”

Madeline bites her lip, fidgets with her fork.

“At the same time as. For a long time. It was complicated and I don’t know everything.”

“Obviously you know quite a bit.” Maya inhales deeply and pulls up air from the bottom of her lungs. Daughters are deprived of so much but friends like Madeline know everything. When did her mother see him? Was this Walter the barefoot man in the apartment? Or was Walter the person on the other end of the phone when Rosalie said,
Maya will know everything. We will figure this out
.

“He’s gone now.”

“Who?”

“Walter. Hit by a car in Bombay in 1987.”

Maya sighs. Walter was her father’s chavrusa
.
And her mother loved him. He had smooth feet. And then he died. It was complicated.
Of course it was. They were all human. Now where is that guitar player and how about we ask for the check and call it a day—

“Walter was your father, Maya.”

“Sol Kerem was my father.”

“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, sweet pea.”

“Don’t tell me who my father was.”

Maya’s eyes fill with tears.
Who died? Anyone I know?
The day she bought that black dress. Her mother sitting in the big leather chair, crying for a reason she did not understand.
You hold his beauty. Your father’s.
Him? The barefoot man in the brocade tunic who looked at her too long?
Him?

“Let it go, Madeline. I’ve heard enough.”

“You have a lot to process, pussycat.”

“I have nothing to process. I prefer my family history to your fictive tale. Besides, you are intruding on my parents, my real mother and father. They don’t deserve you clouding up the past with your lies.”

“Do you think I’m lying to you?”

Maya looks up at Madeline’s cat-eye glasses. She was the best friend from London who was always on the other end of the phone, but not always—

“No,” she says. “You’re not making this up.”

“I begged her to tell you herself.”

“My mother had her shortcomings.”

“We can talk about that if you’d like.”

Maya grimaces. “We have nothing to discuss, Madeline. You are not my therapist, you are not my friend, and my family is really none of your business.”

“I’m sorry, then,” says Madeline.

“You didn’t have to tell me.”

“Do you truly believe that?”

Maya shakes her head. The waiter approaches with their food and Madeline begins to eat.

“Why do you care so much? My parents are gone.”

“Your mother was my best friend.”

“I get it. But why?”

“Why? You are a rabbi, Maya! Don’t you realize that my best friend’s life became intertwined with mine? In some small way, we bear each other’s burdens, carry each other’s stories—”

“That would sound good in a sermon, Madeline, but we’re sitting in a restaurant in San Miguel de Allende, I have no idea why I’ve come, and frankly, it’s time for me to leave. Let’s call this a very short stay.”

“Sweet pea.”

“Stop calling me names,” says Maya.

“Your mother never minded.”

“I’m not my mother.”

“Look. Many years ago in Jerusalem, I watched her stand on a folding chair, clutching her little folded note, and she looked too sophisticated to play the part of a superstitious Jew who believes in a God who reads mail. I muttered something that probably sounded too rational for her to hear, and then I helped her down, and the words flowed from our mouths and we kept the conversation alive until she died. And I begged her to tell you.”

“Well, she didn’t. For whatever reason. And if this story is true, it’s my choice to unravel it or keep it spooled up tight. I’m
pretty good with silences, with uncertainties, and unlike you, not everything is my business.”

“Your mother’s story enlarged my life.”

“How convenient for you. A friend who lent you great fodder. I’m sure you enjoyed that.”

“Please don’t be cruel. I understand that you may hate me for this. I had no choice.”

“Of course you had a choice.”

Maya picks up her fork, tears apart the enchilada and mashes it up.

“I cleaned out your mother’s place. Boxed up everything for you. Letters, mostly. Some clippings, writings, sermons—”

“And I presume you combed through every scrap.”

“That’s your job.”

Maya closes her eyes and opens them again. “It’s hard to breathe in here.”

“I can’t imagine what this is like for you,” says Madeline.

“You’ve imagined quite a lot so far. You didn’t have to do this to us.”

“I believe I did,” says Madeline. “Maybe one day—”

“The nerve of you to crack open my family as if we are playthings for you. My mother didn’t want me to know, okay? I trusted her, I trust her still, and who the hell are you to violate us?”

“I know,” says Madeline.

“You know shit.” Maya runs out of the restaurant and down the cobbled street. “Intruder!” she shouts to no one. “Trespasser!”

The street is slippery and Maya trips and falls. She limps to her hotel, checks in, and collapses on the floor of her room, blood trickling down her leg.

Maya cleans herself up in the bathroom sink and then leaves the hotel, runs up to the casa where her mother lived, and sits on the curb. She stays there until the sun sets, waiting for her mother to slip out of the Mexican night, unlock the door, and invite Maya in. Rosalie would wrap herself in the tallit Maya bought for her and she would tell Maya everything.
There was a Walter. Yes, that Walter. Your father’s chavrusa. The man you met. He was your father. And Sol was your father in all the ways that matter.
And then she would say,
I’m sorry. I can’t spell it out for you. It was my life and everything happened as it did.

When the box arrives later that night Maya brings it up to her room, places it on the bed, and stares at it. She wonders why the ancient rabbis didn’t create a prayer for setting eyes on something that had been previously hidden. She would have to create that prayer herself; she would add it to the list of new liturgies that awaited her. A prayer for finding out your father is not your father. A prayer for forgiving the woman who told you. A prayer for being confused and tired and curious and thirsty for water that doesn’t need to be purified. A prayer to understand her and him and him and why.

Maya washes her hands and pulls the tape off the box. The tallit she bought for Rosalie rests on the top layer and Maya wraps it around her shoulders and begins to read.