Suzanne
Suzanne read Rachel’s E-mail with an increasing sense of separation physical and mental. Suzanne had been told about a certain kind o rapture, a form of temporary infatuation, that came over people in Jerusalem. She was accustomed to a high level of intimacy with Rachel and she missed it. They were inhabiting different universes at the moment. Each of them regarded the other’s preoccupations as intrusions Worse than tangential. Irrelevant.
Dear Mom
,
Now I know where the old legend of the streets of gold comes from: here. In the late afternoon, the streets near the Old City seem to be made of old gold. Sometimes they seem almost edible to me, like peanut brittle. It seems a pity to walk on them, yet people have for thousands of years
.
Sometimes I feel drunk with breathing (and sometimes just plain sick because of the smog from the cars and trucks that gathers in the bowl of the city). But when the exhaust doesn’t get to me, the scents make me giddy
.
Jerusalem smells of pine, or maybe it’s cedar, and of rosemary. When I think how you and Marta used to try to keep one pitiful pot of rosemary going all winter in the kitchen window, it makes me giggle. Here it grows like a weed. They use it for ground covers on hills. They use it for hedges, the way we use privet. Also their gardens are full of lavender. What we cherish as prize little specimens grow everywhere here fiercely as poison ivy in Massachusetts
.
We were sitting on a hill near the kibbutz where Michael’s friend lives, and I realized we were sitting on thyme. It was all over the ground there. I don’t know if they planted it or if it grows wild, but truly, here even the weeds are holy and wonderful. I really do have a desire to kiss the ground sometimes, like
some people do when they get off the plane. Wherever we go, I feel the past walking with us, shining through the present, so that at times, everything seems lit from within
.
As for us, I think we will be married in late November or early December. We have to decide with the rebbe next week what would be convenient for him, and then I can give you the date. You should make reservations at once, then. It will be early enough in December so you won’t run into all the Christians coming for their holidays
.
How was she going to make Rachel understand she could not afford flying to Israel herself, let alone with anybody else in the family? She would have to disappoint her daughter, who was never demanding, never surly. She felt rotten, but she also felt trapped. She was plunging headfirst into debt, and there were more expenses coming. She would have to sit down and figure out her situation exactly. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as she thought.
Rachel’s next E-mail was less ecstatic.
I am really shocked at both Elena and Marta. I can understand Marta better. After all, pregnancy makes some women’s tempers short. How is she now? Is she really going to divorce Jim? I am writing her separately. Marta has always been like a really close aunt to me, and I can’t even remember a time she was not there, even before we lived together. I know she will be a good mother to her baby, but I also remember how hard you told me it was for you to raise Elena alone. I am worried for Marta and she is always in my thoughts and prayers
.
Elena will never cease to amaze me, what she decides to give herself to, what she pursues, and what she flees from. She is my own sister, but I think there is something perverse in her which leads her on dangerous paths and into darkness of her own making. I understand that she didn’t know that Marta was expecting, but she certainly knew Jim was married. What did she hope would happen? How did she justify it to herself? I try to imagine, and I can’t
.
I am less surprised at him. He has always had a wandering eye, and he used to put his arms around me more than I was comfortable with. He always seemed like an old man to me. I mean, he was my “uncle.” Everyone has uncles who are just a little too familiar, so I didn’t see it as a big problem. Like relatives
who insist on kissing you on the mouth when you don’t know them that well. Michael’s family are big kissers. It’s hard for me to get used to, but I resist showing discomfort. It’s my fault for being too stiff and formal with people
.
This is a great place to work on being overly formal and distant, because everybody talks to you as if they were family and had the right to yell at you and criticize you to your face and give you advice. Everyone from the guy behind the counter in the coffee bar to the cab driver who took us from the airport the very first day to the woman who cuts my hair, off of Ben Yehuda near Cat’s Corner where all the kids hang out. She is planning my wedding for me, without my desire or input. At least she thinks she is. She has cut my hair all differently. I will have a picture taken to send you. We don’t have a new camera yet, since Michael’s was stolen. I wonder if we should ask for a camera as an early wedding present, as we could sure use one here, hint, hint. Maybe I should ask Dad, what do you think?
Suzanne sat at her desk going over bills. Money was still hemorrhaging. She had to find a way to cut costs; she had to find a way to make more money. Of course the simplest solution would be to leave the university and go back into private practice full-time, but if she did that, she would have no time at all for her daughters, her mother, Jake, her life. Herself. She had lived that way when she was younger. About to turn fifty, she found it unappealing. Stick your head in the buzz saw. The total unreflective life.
Still, she would have to cut back on pro bono work. What a choice. Be good to your mother or be useful to the people who really need your help with the courts and the law. It should not be a choice anyone had to make. It was unfair. People got old. People had strokes, heart attacks, developed cancers. It should not come as such a financial shock to a family. Something was wrong with the whole system of health delivery when taking care of a family member could bankrupt you in a few years. She did not know what to do. Everything she was earning, she was spending, and her savings were eroding at a frightening rate. When her savings were gone and her investments cashed in, she would have no cushion for disaster and trouble; and where would the money come from then for Beverly’s care? She could complain to no one except to Jake, when he was around, since she hardly felt she could dump on Marta, and it seemed tactless to complain to Karla. Would Rosella step in if
something went wrong with Karla?
When
something went wrong. Rosella’s family’s financial resources were meager, but Karla was already living with her.
Costs. Okay, drop the rod and gun club. She wasn’t going to be shooting with Marta. Cut back to basic cable. She never had time to watch movies anyhow. Less takeout? But who would do the cooking? If she was to litigate more lucrative cases, she would not have time to make even the few meals she did. Elena was going to have to pick up some of the slack. Less dry cleaning, somehow, but she had to be absolutely neat and polished for court.
It was clear that she could not fly to Israel for Rachel’s wedding. Maybe Rachel and Michael could wait till they got home. Rachel would be incredibly disappointed, but to fly over would cost several thousand just for herself. She did not know when Beverly would be back home. She did not know what kind of care Beverly would need. Suzanne plunged her face into her hands and sighed. She felt run over. She got up and went into the living room.
“Elena,” she said, standing over the couch. Then she thought better of their positions and took a seat in the armchair.
Elena opened her eyes. “I’m trying to learn to meditate.”
“Really?” Suzanne tried not to sound skeptical. “Does it help?”
“Sometimes. I should take a class. Marta should learn to meditate.”
“I think we should stay off the subject of Marta.”
Elena stretched with feral grace, arching her back. Elena had never gone through an awkward age, as Rachel and she herself had—sometimes she wondered if she had ever grown out of it.
“Elena, we have money problems. We’re spending much faster than we’re earning. We have to cut costs. Beverly’s condition is bankrupting me.”
“Just don’t let Grandma catch on to that.”
“I have no intention of speaking to her about the situation. You and I have to solve it.”
Elena seemed fascinated by the idea of cooking. “I used to see the cooks whip up dishes at the restaurant. I used to think like I could be a chef, except it’s so sweaty and they all have mad dog tempers and throw knives around the kitchen. Besides, I don’t want to go back to working in a restaurant. Too many drugs around. Too much nightlife.”
“Well, cooking for you, me, and Beverly won’t take chef’s school.”
“You have to let me cook the way I like it. No tofu. No turkey burgers. And at least sometimes I get to make things hot.”
“If you cook, you choose what we eat. Agreed.”
“I can do it.” Elena looked pleased with herself. “I’ll take over the grocery shopping too.”
“That would truly help.” Suzanne had expected a fraught conversation, that Elena would feel martyred and coerced. Finally she said that.
“No.” Elena propped her head on her knuckles. “It’s kind of sweet that you need me. You’ve always been so supercompetent, I never felt useful. That’s why I didn’t mind taking care of Grandma on Mondays. Besides, I love her. I like the way we have to manage together. I’m talented at living on shit and air. I’ve had a lot of practice. I never did like taking money from you once I was out of college, so a lot of time I was getting by on hope. I can cut our food bills in half. Now that I’m working, I can kick in something toward the electric and phone bills.”
It proved much harder to talk to Rachel. The phone call had to be set up by E-mail in advance, because of the time difference.
“Mother, I’m not going to be married three or four times, so if you miss the first, you can’t catch the next showing.”
“Couldn’t you wait till you get back to the States? It’s only till May.”
“You’re just trying to get me to put my wedding off. You tried that when I was home.”
“Rachel, my back is to the wall financially. I’m spending more than I’m making. If I borrow money to go to Israel for your wedding, I don’t see how I can ever pay it back—and Beverly is going to be living here soon, more dependent on me than ever.”
“It won’t feel like I’m really married if you aren’t there, Mother. It won’t feel right.”
“Then please wait till you come home, because I don’t have the money to go there.”
“I’m not going to put off the marriage. It’s time for us to get married. I’ll never in my life meet anyone else I want to marry. Michael and I, we’re two of a kind. We’re soul mates. He’s my
chassen
, my intended, my
bashert
. I won’t take a chance on losing him, on things coming apart.”
“Couldn’t you put it off for a few months?”
“It’s complicated enough. We have to go before the rabbinical court and prove we’re Jews and single and so on. It’s a formality, but we have to do it to get a marriage license. We’re trying to get an appointment soon. It’s like a dream, to be married here. Whenever I think of my wedding, which is going to be so beautiful, I want to share it with you. There’ll be dancing, Mother, and local wine and great food and friends we’ve made here that I want you to meet. We’re writing vows in Hebrew.”
“Rachel, I want to be there. I want desperately to be there. But I can’t see my way out of this hole. All I see are the walls of increasing debt around me.”
“You’ll be in our prayers, Mother. You, Grandma, Marta,…and Elena.”
Oh, great, Suzanne thought, but she rebuked herself. Religious attention was what Rachel had to offer. “Thank you. We’ll get through all this somehow.” Her words felt like sawdust in her mouth.
She was lecturing her Feminist Legal Theory class. “As a woman, empathy is one of your strengths. As a lawyer, it can destroy you. Empathize with the victim, and you’ve lost your momentum as a defense attorney, whose role is defined as speaking for the client and giving him the best defense possible.
“As a lawyer, you’re trained at arguing, you’re practiced at making points, you’re good at turning an argument back on a person, picking holes in stories, cross-examining.
“As a mother or a lover or a wife, these skills and habits are dangerous and undesirable. They can and will destroy personal relationships. Don’t think being a lawyer won’t change you. It already has. You don’t think the same way, you don’t talk the same way. You will not act the same way.”
As she spoke, she flashed back to the last year with Sam. All her lawyerly observational skills had gone into cracking the facade of their marriage until she proved that he was having an affair, until she knew almost as much about that affair as Sam did. Smart? Maybe. Painful? Absolutely.
Out to California for another damned postponement of this stupid trial. It just goes on and on and on. My lawyer will die of old age before they drop the charges or we finally go to trial. I expected to be flying to Ethiopia, but the court won’t allow me out of the country. This is killing me by inches. I’m one of those travelers who are very moved by Africa, and I’ve never been to Ethiopia. I’m supposed to be useful around water issues, but will I ever get there? I know it’s the lumber interests that are screwing me, but what good does it do to know that? Anyhow, at least I’ll see you in a couple of weeks. Change of venue refused. Preliminary motions go on. Both sides jockeying for some arcane advantage.
A 10:00
P.M
. phone call. “It’s not so bad,” he said, “this occasionality. Is it so bad? After all, do you want a husband demanding you do the laundry, pay the bills, rub his neck, have supper on the table?”
“No.” She didn’t even have to think about it. “Like you, I was married once. It was a mess. I don’t have time.” She loved the sound of his voice in her ear. She closed her eyes when she spoke to him on the phone, lying in bed. “My marriage to Sam died of neglect, like a forgotten goldfish.”