28
Ruth declined to go grocery shopping with me the following day. “I’m taking Louise to lunch and the JCC today.”
I shook my head. “You’ll have her converting before you know it.”
“That one? She’d get all out of sorts the first time a rabbi said no. But if we can cure her main ailment, loneliness, I would think the anti-Semitism will die down too.” Ruth grinned at me. “Then we’ll start tackling her issues with other groups.”
To her credit, Ruth was one of the few of her generation who didn’t suffer from the xenophobia that was leading to the mass exodus of Jews from the corridor of Washington, DC, that they had spent the last fifty years inhabiting.
Not that my hometown of Philadelphia didn’t have the same issues.
The moment the first family with darker skin moved into Oxford Circle, people started selling.
And once Ada Heller, the area’s Jewish matchmaker who set up my own parents, was gone, well .
.. synagogues were popping up in the suburbs of the city now.
Louise Kline, however, had pitched just as much of a fit over hospital maids as she had over Jewish doctors and nurses. So Ruth had her work cut out for her there.
“Have fun,” I said, thinking that afternoon sounded like anything but.
“It’s not about fun,” Ruth said with a sigh. “It’s about tikkun olam .”
“About what?”
“Making the world a better place,” Ruth said, her head cocked in surprise that I didn’t know the term. “My father was a rabbi. Before we came here. Here he opened a laundry.”
I studied her. “I never knew that. I thought you lived on a farm.”
“We did—it was from my mother’s family. A wedding gift. But it’s why they came for us first. They knew attacking a rabbi’s family would make others leave.”
I tried to imagine being forced out of my childhood home. Not just my home—my whole country. Taking only what I could carry. It was unfathomable. More so now that I was a mother myself.
“Do you hate them?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The Russians. Soviets now, I suppose.”
Ruth shook her head. “Life is too short to hate. I told Louise that. Besides, everything happens for a reason. I never would have met Abe if we had stayed. Or had Harry. Or Susie and Bobby.” She looked up at me. “Or you.”
I chuckled mirthlessly. “I would assume you’d consider that a bonus.”
Her expression turned curious. “Would I be here if that were the case?”
I didn’t have an answer. Yes, she had said all along that she was there to help. That I didn’t realize I needed it. But I took her words to mean she didn’t trust me to raise the kids properly on my own. Was it possible she actually really just wanted to help?
No. The fireman and Sam from the hospital. She was here to meddle. But as long as she was going out and not destroying my house, I could enjoy a trip to the store on my own.
Mr. Greene was at the grocery store when I arrived, restacking the entire display of apples, while Eddie looked on, appearing every bit as annoyed as he did when Janet tried to manage his life for him.
“What’s going on?” I asked quietly.
He startled, having not noticed me until I said something. “Apparently the produce isn’t stacked correctly,” Eddie said, shaking his head. “Taking over the family business has its downsides.”
My mother was a housewife and my father worked as an accountant. “No danger of that for me.”
Eddie glanced over at me. “Where’s Ruth?”
“Going to lunch to convert an anti-Semite and fix the world.”
“Huh?”
“It’s a long story.”
Eddie inclined his head toward his father. “Then I’m putting up with this for nothing.”
It was my turn to look confused. “I don’t understand.”
“That’s why he’s here. He asked me what day you two did your shopping.”
I watched as Mr. Greene placed a perfect ripe apple at the top of the pyramid he had constructed. One careless shopper taking one from the middle and the whole thing was going to topple into the aisle. “He wanted to see Ruth?”
“Seems pretty keen on her if you ask me.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek. I agreed, based on what I had seen at Paula’s party, quite honestly. And Ruth’s protestations aside, I thought she felt the same.
“That’s an ... interesting ... development,” I said, thinking out loud.
Eddie turned to me. “Don’t you be getting any ideas,” he said sternly as his father started on the pears. “My father isn’t your ticket to getting rid of Ruth.”
“Is that what you think of me?” I asked, genuinely hurt.
“No,” Eddie said quickly. “But you did say it.”
“That was before. Eddie, you should have seen them together in the kitchen yesterday. I actually asked Ruth if he was really just a friend from how cozy they seemed.”
Eddie colored slightly and opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
“She got offended, don’t worry. Nothing happened while .
.. Nothing happened,” I finished quickly.
Saying while his mother was alive wouldn’t end well for anyone, and I didn’t feel like prying my foot out of my own mouth.
“I just think there was a connection. And the fact that he’s here to see her . ..,” I trailed off.
“How old does someone have to be before a Jewish mother stops trying to fix them up?”
“Dead,” I said, then laughed.
Eddie shook his head, his annoyance visibly evaporating as he tried and failed to contain his own laugh.
Mr. Greene looked over at the sound. He replaced the pears he had started on willy-nilly and came over. “Barbara,” he said with a nod, then looked around. “Is your mother-in-law with you?”
“She isn’t.” I honestly felt as disappointed as he looked. “She had a lunch date with a friend.”
His shoulders drooped, and I felt an innate urge to make him feel better by inviting him to dinner with her.
But both Eddie and Ruth had said no. And as frustrating as Ruth had been between Sam Goldberg and that fireman, I wasn’t going to stoop to her level.
Again, that is. I definitely didn’t want her kicking Mr. Greene the way she had Mr. Moskowitz.
But he had such a hangdog look that I couldn’t resist feeding him some crumbs. “I’ll try to get her shopping with me next week though.”
He perked right up. “You should ‘forget’ something today, so you need to come back this week.”
“Pop,” Eddie said warningly.
“What? I’m an old man. Who knows how long I have left?”
“You’re sixty-one,” Eddie said. “You’re hardly at death’s door.”
“Your mother was forty-nine.”
“And you don’t have breast cancer.”
“On that note,” I said brightly, “I’m going to do my shopping. But I’ll try to come up with something else we need when I’m home.”
As I pushed my cart down the produce aisle, I could hear them arguing behind me. By the time I was done shopping, Mr. Greene was nowhere to be found, but Eddie was waiting by the registers.
“You know he’s coming in every day now, right?”
I cringed. “Oops.”
“Yeah. Oops.”
“Tell him I said I’ll call you if I’m bringing her, so he doesn’t need to wait at the store.”
“Have you met my father?” he asked. “He’s like a dog with a bone. When he wants something, nothing gets in his way.”
“Oh, speaking of which, I need more Milk-Bones for Pepper.” I grinned at Eddie. “Almost got me back here this week already.”
Eddie pointed to the aisle with dog food. “Go get them, and I’ll start ringing you up, so you don’t have to wait in line.”
I leaned up and kissed his cheek before walking past, leaving my cart with him. “By the way,” I called over my shoulder. “I don’t buy that gruff act for a second, just so you know.”
He didn’t reply, but when I peeked back at him, I felt a small knot of satisfaction to see he was as red as the tomatoes in my cart.
The phone was ringing when I got home. I left the bags in the front hall and dashed to the kitchen to get it, hoping it was Janet, not a sick child at school.
But it was Shirley, one of the nurses from the hospital.
“Barb,” she said. “You need to get down here.”
I looked at the clock and sighed. “I can pop in, but I can’t stay. I have to get the kids. What’s wrong?”
“It’s your mother-in-law. She just got admitted. They’re examining her now. Just come as fast as you can.”