5
As the hot water of the shower caressed my shoulders Monday morning, I leaned my tired forehead against the cool tile wall. Susie woke up from a nightmare around three, and I had struggled to fall back asleep after getting her settled.
But the cold contrast of the tile triggered a memory—it was an old one, from the early days of our marriage, before kids and responsibilities had sapped so much of our energy.
I always woke up before Harry so that I could make him breakfast while he showered.
But one morning, he surprised me, pulling open the shower curtain and slipping in behind me.
“What—?” I’d said before he silenced me with a kiss, running his hands across my wet body before turning me around, my forehead against the tile as it was now.
I grazed a hand down from my neck, moving lower as I thought about the warm, comforting feel of Harry’s body against mine, imagining my hand was his. My breath hitched slightly, and then—
A hand suddenly ripped the shower curtain back.
I screamed, hunching over reflexively and trying to cover myself against the intruder, before looking up into my mother-in-law’s face.
“Ruth!” I tried to wrench the shower curtain back into place with one hand, using what I could of the fabric to shield my body, but she kept a firm grip on it.
“Where do you keep the spatulas?” she asked, entirely unfazed by my nudity, the hand that wasn’t keeping the shower curtain open resting on her hip.
“Can it wait until I’m out of the shower?” I asked.
“Only if the children will eat burnt eggs. Where are they?”
“The drawer next to the refrigerator,” I said, finally yanking the shower curtain from her hand and tugging it closed. “Why didn’t you just look in the drawers?”
“Well, I didn’t want to overstep.”
But opening the curtain while I’m showering isn’t overstepping? “Next time, please just look in the drawers,” I said through gritted teeth. Then I remembered what time it was. “Wait. The kids aren’t up yet.”
“They were reading in their rooms and famished. I’m making them eggs.”
“They’re supposed to stay in their rooms until seven.”
Ruth started to pull the curtain back again, but I held it shut with all my strength, peeking my head out from around the side to appease her. “They’re too hungry to wait until seven,” she said. “I’ll go finish making the eggs.”
I waited until I heard the bathroom door close before I lowered my shoulders. My eyes drifted toward the shower wall, where my forehead had rested, but the memory was long gone now. And even if it wasn’t, the mood was.
What had I gotten myself into?
I tilted my head skyward. “You’re in so much trouble that you’re not here to deal with this for me,” I said, then sighed and turned off the water. “Two weeks,” I muttered as I toweled off.
I walked into the kitchen to find Ruth at the sink. The air was smoky and both kids looked up at me with matching expressions of concern.
I crossed to the window and opened it to let fresh air in.
Ruth glanced at me over her shoulder, but I smiled to disarm her.
“It’s going to be a lovely day,” I said, nodding to the cardinal who was back on his branch.
She turned back to the sink, satisfied that I wasn’t going to give her grief about the smoke, and I went to the table to kiss the children’s foreheads.
“Mommy,” Bobby whispered. “I can’t eat this.”
I looked to Susie, who was cutting her food into teeny-tiny pieces but not eating either.
“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” I replied in a hushed tone, my eyes on Ruth’s back. Then I actually looked at the eggs, which were watery with chunks of red and white in them. “Is that ...?”
“He wanted lasagna last night,” Ruth said without turning around. “So I put some in the eggs. It’s practically an omelet—cheese and tomatoes.”
The kids looked at me imploringly, and I hesitated. Respecting elders was such an ironclad law of my youth, but there had to be some kind of line when it came to defending my own children.
I took Bobby’s fork and poked at the pile of mush on his plate. “Like an omelet,” I repeated optimistically. “Cheese and ... tomatoes ...” No. The kids couldn’t eat this. But how to tell her that politely?
Of course, if I wanted to get rid of her faster, rude might just do the job.
That was tempting after the shower. But I looked down at the determined woman next to the sink and found myself wavering.
I didn’t remember saying that his family would be mine when I said until death parts us in our wedding vows.
But if the roles were reversed, and I was gone, I knew full well that Harry would ensure my parents were in the kids’ lives.
Ruth was abrasive and stuck in her ways, but she had never, to my knowledge, acted maliciously. This wasn’t a punishment for Bobby’s peanut butter sandwich—it was her attempt at making peace over the night before.
I joined Ruth at the sink. “Ruth,” I said quietly. “Did you try the eggs?”
“I had a piece of toast,” she said, still working at the burned frying pan with a piece of steel wool.
I turned off the water. “Leave it,” I said. “Heloise says boiling water, vinegar, and some baking soda will do most of the work for you. I can do that later.”
“I don’t know a Heloise,” Ruth said, reaching for the hot water knob. Her voice dripped with distrust. “Is she German?”
“I—I don’t know her in person. It’s a newspaper column on cleaning.”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing some elbow grease won’t fix. I don’t need the newspaper to tell me how to clean a pan.”
“Listen,” I said. “I appreciate that you wanted to feed Bobby what he wanted. It shows how much you care. But lasagna and eggs just don’t work together.”
“What are you talking about? The children love my eggs.” She turned around and took in their full plates.
Both kids looked down guiltily. She shook her head and wiped her hands on the dish towel.
“You have to try them at least,” she told them.
“They don’t have to finish food they don’t like, but they do have to try it.
” Then she glanced at me. “That one is a Grandma rule.”
I bit my bottom lip. “I suppose that’s fair—with the condition that if you’re experimenting, you try it first.”
“We ate boiled cabbage for a full year when I was young,” she said. “This is a delicacy compared to that.”
I took Susie’s fork from her hand and held it out to Ruth. She crossed to the table, took the fork, speared a large bite of lasagna eggs, brought it to her mouth, and chewed, her face remaining neutral as she swallowed.
“Well,” she said, reaching for her coffee and taking an inordinately long sip. “Of course we didn’t like these. Whoever heard of Jews eating lasagna in their eggs? I’ll put a little gefilte fish in next time, and they’ll be a delicacy.”
“Can I just have cereal?” Bobby asked, his eyes wide. “Please, Mommy?”
“Me too,” Susie said, looking slightly green.
“Yes,” I said. “Grandma was just kidding about gefilte fish. Weren’t you?”
She looked like she was considering it. “Maybe for Passover.” I shot her a sharp look as I poured Sugar Frosted Flakes, which the kids had talked me into letting them get, into two bowls.
“Why don’t you come grocery shopping with me today and we can pick out some things they’ll like?”
“They’ll never eat well if you only make things they like already. They need to try new things, even if they aren’t their favorite.”
I held my tongue, assuring myself as I packed lunches for school that I would be the first Jewish candidate for sainthood by the end of these two weeks.