“Your friends?”
“My boyfriend didn’t like most of my friends, so I’d already dropped them. I lost my health insurance and stopped taking my medication and started taking my mother’s, which is covered — but it’s not really the same.”
“I have lots of medication,” I offer, wondering, is everyone on medication?
She says nothing.
“It still feels like something’s missing from the picture — you’re taking care of your parents and you’re pretending to be someone else? Amanda?” I repeat the name. “Amanda, was that always your name?”
“Are you picking on me? I feel like you’re picking on me.”
“I’m just trying to understand. When you’re taking care of your parents, are you yourself, or this other person — the assumed identity?”
“When I’m taking care of my parents, I live in the bedroom where I grew up, with my same books and toys on the shelf, and it’s like I’m still in junior high, like I just got home from school and happened to find them there, sitting on the living-room sofa, but maybe now my dad has wet his pants.”
“Do they know what year it is?”
“Sometimes, and sometimes it changes many times in the course of a day. ‘Do you have homework?’ my mother will ask. ‘Just a little,’ I say. ‘I may have to go to the library — so-and-so’s mom is giving me a ride.’ When I take them to the doctor, she asks, ‘How did you learn to drive, and do your feet reach the pedals?’”
“And what do you say?”
“I’m tall for my age.” She pauses. “This is my life for now,” she says.
“And later?”
“I’m leaving and never coming back.”
She says this and I’m frightened — I don’t really know her, and I already feel abandoned. Racing thoughts: What about me? Take me with you — we’ll go to Europe, we’ll travel the globe.
She notes the shift in my expression. “Oh, come on,” she says. “Really? You’re living in your brother’s house, wearing his clothes, and I’m living with my parents — you can’t think this is a relationship?”
“We need to find the guy who put the girl in the garbage bag. I would feel a lot better if that was resolved.”
She gathers herself to leave. “You’ve been watching too much TV.”
In the morning, the phone again summons me. I answer quickly, thinking it might be her. “Is this Harold?” a woman asks.
“Yes.”
“Good morning, Harold,” she says, “this is Lauren Spektor, the director of celebrations here at the synagogue.”
“I didn’t know there was a director of celebrations.”
“It’s a new position,” she says. “Formerly I worked in development at City Opera.” Another pause, as though she’s reviewing her script. “We were going over our calendar and I see that we’ve got Nathaniel down for a bar mitzvah on July 3.” Another pause. “I was wondering where we are with that?”
“Good question.”
“Does Nathaniel know his Hebrew? Has he been studying? No one here has heard a peep. …”
“Actually,” I say, “I tried to make an appointment with the rabbi a while ago, but his assistant demanded a contribution of not less than five hundred dollars and I found that off-putting.”
There is a long pause. “That issue has been addressed.”
“Is the Chinese woman no longer working at the temple?”
“She’s gone back to school,” Lauren Spektor says.
“Good,” I say. “Hopefully, she’ll find something that’s a good match.”
“She’s studying at the yeshiva.”
A moment of contemplative silence passes between us.
“There are two ways we can go with this,” Lauren says. “I can refer you to some party planners and our preferred vendors for catering, flowers, personalized yarmulkes, or we could consider a postponement — I hate to use the word ‘cancellation.’”
There’s something in her tone that gives me the sense that the temple would rather there not be a bar mitzvah on July 3.
“The temple is mindful of its image; between your brother and his wife and the Ponzi, we’ve been slightly higher-profile than some of the community is comfortable with.”
I take a breath and start again. “Tell me, Lauren Spektor, is there still such a thing as the Sisterhood Luncheon?”
“Are you talking about egg salad, tuna, and cherry tomatoes galore?”
“That’s the stuff.”
“Long gone,” she says. “Our current Sisterhood is mostly working women who don’t have time to cook — but we have several caterers who can provide something similar.” She pauses. “I don’t mean to pressure you, but I’d like to know sooner rather than later. We’ve got a gay couple looking for a wedding that morning — they want to be done by eleven so they can get out to the Pines for the weekend and beat the traffic.”
“Something to think on,” I say, at a loss for words otherwise. “As you can imagine, I’m at a bit of a loss as to what the plans may have been.”
“I would think Jane had a file — everyone has a file,” Lauren says. “Also, she left a deposit. Typically, that’s nonrefundable, but we’re willing to work with you. We’d consider a partial.”
“How much was the deposit?” I ask.
“Twenty-five hundred,” she says. “So — how should we proceed?”
“Let me talk with Nate and get back to you.”
“It’s been a difficult time for everyone,” she says.
“So it has.”
When I raise the subject of the bar mitzvah with Nate, his voice cracks. I’ve been dreading this.
“I don’t think I can do it — it makes me too sad. It was something Mom was working on.”
“You could do it for her — in her honor?”
“I can’t imagine everyone we ever knew just staring at me, somehow thinking I am a survivor. I can’t imagine writing the thank-you notes for all the iPods and all the crap people give me that will mean more to them than to me, because the truth is, I don’t want more stuff. I can’t imagine that any ‘god’ I believe in would think this is the thing to do.” He stops to take a breath. “If I was being honest,” Nate goes on, “I wouldn’t want to do anything that would bring the whole family together again. People talk about the nuclear family as the perfect family, but they don’t say much about meltdown.” He stops. “Did you have a bar mitzvah?”
“I did,” I say.
“And? Was it a good experience?”
“You want to know about my bar mitzvah?” I pause. “My parents didn’t want me to get a swelled head — as though having any decent feelings about yourself caused something akin to encephalitis from which one might not recover — so I shared my bar mitzvah with Solomon Bernstein. It was pitched to me as a good deal, cheaper, and, with the Bernsteins further up the food chain, it put my parents in with the right people.”
“Basically, it was all about your parents?”
“Yes.” I pause. “After the ceremony there was what was called a Sisterhood Luncheon. All the ladies of the temple made egg salad and tuna fish. Some people got food poisoning — luckily, no one died. But there were new rules after that: all food for Sisterhood Luncheons had to be made at the temple, and they all used Hellmann’s mayonnaise and not Miracle Whip — which was deemed a goy food and not to be trusted.”
“Goy food?”
“According to my mother — your grandmother — all things, products, food, et cetera, can be divided into Jew and non-Jew.”
“Such as?”
“Crest toothpaste — Jew; Colgate — non-Jew.”
“Tom’s?” Nate asks.
“Atheist or Unitarian. Gin is non-Jew, as is Belvedere, Ketel One, or any artisanal liquor with the exception of Manischewitz, which is Jewish. In any Jewish household you might find a single bottle of honey-colored liquor that no one can remember if it’s Scotch or bourbon, rarely two — certainly not three. Crème de menthe on vanilla ice cream is assimilated Jewish. Mah-jongg and pinochle are Jewish.”