Chapter 9
9
The rest of the morning flies by in a blur of project briefs and pitch preparations. I edit some copy. I respond to some emails. I roll my eyes when Nancy pipes up at a staff meeting that matching team shirts would really make us stand out at the next client presentation. I show up to every meeting and finish everything I’m supposed to get done before lunchtime, but it’s truly a morning of half-assing it all. No chance I’ve elevated my B-student status at the office today.
I can barely focus on my tasks, because now that I’ve committed aloud to inviting Hot Josh to the wedding, it’s all I can think about. I haven’t made any actual decisions or taken any risks like this in so long. The whole thing feels impossible.
How am I going to ask him?
What do I do when he inevitably says no?
And God, what do I do if he says yes?
There are no good options. If he turns me down, perpetually running into my across-the-hall neighbor will be excruciatingly awkward. I’ll probably have to move. If he says yes, well, hell. I don’t even know what to do in that unlikely scenario.
The trick is going to be making the ask hyper casual.
Like I don’t even care, one way or the other.
Hey, Hot Josh, oh my God hahahahaha WHOOPS, I mean JOSH! Want to go to this wedding with me? No big deal. Super chill. Whose wedding? Oh—haha. Funny you should ask. I mean of course it’s someone I barely know. I mean, well. My little sister actually. But we’re not that close. Although I am the maid of honor. But like, kind of not really, there’s this other bridesmaid Layla who—never mind, never mind. Anyway I swear, it’s all, like, SO CHILL, not a big deal, oh hey, did I mention it’s also my fortieth birthday this weekend? Big milestone, not at all anxious about it, hahahahahaha! WAIT, COME BACK, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!
This is a terrible idea.
Just then, another email message hits my inbox. It’s from my creative director, Amy, saying she might have “extra” assignments for me toward the end of the week. Weird. I’m not usually her go-to when she needs something extra. I’m just the bread-and-butter gal, churning out copy for steady but unexciting frozen food and pharma clients. Most of what I do, I can crank out pretty quickly, without even thinking about it. I can often multitask, catching up on my personal emails or scheduling a haircut while I brainstorm new headlines.
That’s why I’d planned to write a draft of my wedding toast between this morning’s meetings. But between actual work and dreaming up stupid ways to ask Hot Josh out, I never got around to it. But it’s fine. It’s only Tuesday. The wedding is Saturday. Plenty of time.
Time—oh, shit.
I look up and see that it’s nearly noon. Time to meet my mother for lunch.
Instead of taking the train to meet my mother, I decide to walk the half mile from Merchandise Mart to Macy’s. It takes the same amount of time, unless you catch the train just right. Still, when it’s cold out I usually take transit just to get out of the wind for a few minutes. But today, I appreciate the blustering gusts.
I feel my cheeks reddening, my muscles contracting in quick shivers and hurried steps. Lord knows I can use the exercise, and Mom will approve. She’s been more critical of my weight lately, which grates on my nerves. She’s not usually a stereotypical Jewish mom about bullshit like that, but she’s hypercritical these days. I hope that maybe she’ll decide to go easy on me today, but the odds are rarely in my favor.
“Jesus, Eve! Did you walk here?”
My mother looks genuinely shocked. She stares as I unbundle myself at our table. She’s seated and already has a swiftly cooling coffee in front of her. Her shining silver curls are stiff with product to eliminate all frizz. She’s wearing neutral lipstick, lots of mascara, and one of her many pale pastel pantsuits, the chosen uniform for female real estate agents of her generation.
“Yeah,” I say. “Trying to get those steps in.”
“Good for you, but careful you don’t catch cold,” Mom says, frowning and wrapping her arms around herself, rubbing her upper arms as though I brought a draft in with me. “With the wedding this weekend, that’s really tempting fate.”
I can’t win.
I drop into my seat across from her and pick up the menu, cheeks still stinging from the cold wind scraping at them.
“I’m going with the Walnut Room salad,” my mother says. “They have great salads here. Really great salads. You should get one. So good. Very filling. I always wind up taking home leftovers.”
I don’t say anything. But I’m definitely ordering actual food and skipping the allegedly amazing salad. I’m pretty sure that there has never in the history of the world been a “really great salad.” There have only been moderately sad salads, and very sad salads. Exhaling, I look around, hoping the cheer of the place will distract me from the irritation I’m already feeling toward my mother.
The Walnut Room is the restaurant on the seventh floor of the historic Macy’s on State Street in downtown Chicago. It’s been there for more than a hundred years, and feels like stepping into a bygone era, with its alabaster arches and high ceilings, white tablecloths, the constant buzz of cheery shoppers below offset by the quiet chatter of the mostly older crowd of diners within. Large white Macy’s bags boasting their iconic red star logo sit beside most tables, like well-behaved dogs perched by the owners’ feet.
The already-heady vintage atmosphere is heightened at this time of year, thanks to the holiday decor. The bubble-gum-bright, over-the-top holiday decorations are breathtaking. There’s a forty-five-foot-tall Christmas tree in the middle of the room, resplendent in lights and colorful decorations. The tables all radiate out from there, ensuring everyone a view of either the gorgeous tree or downtown Chicago.
Our table is in the main dining area. It’s one of the farthest from the tree, and we still have a good view. Holly, tinsel, brightly painted nutcrackers, a six-foot stack of massive pink, green, and yellow macarons, and a thousand Christmas tchotchkes dazzle everywhere you look. I even see a delicate silver menorah on a small table display in the far corner. (Spot-the-menorah: a holiday I-spy game inadvertently played by every Jewish person in the world.) My gaze drifts past the menorah, though, lingering instead on the Christmas tree looming over us.
Dad would love this.
Something catches in my throat, and I try to cough it away. At this sound, my mother furrows her brow.
“So how are you doing?” she asks, suspicious. Like I’ve already caught a cold and I’ve been hiding it from her, and now Rosie’s wedding will be ruined.
“I’m doing fine, Mom,” I lie easily. “How are you doing?”
“I’m doing,” she says with a noncommittal shrug, and returns her gaze to the menu even though she already knows what she’s ordering.
Check-in complete, I guess.
I think about completely moving on from anything personal. I could ask her what reality shows she’s watching these days, or how her marathon training is going. But I’m so sick of meaningless conversations with my mother. Ever since we lost Dad, we both feel the need to spend more time together— it’s what he would have wanted —but never know what to do with that time. What to talk about. We usually stick to superficial topics, and we always avoid talking about the one person we’re probably both thinking about. It’s been that way this whole painful year. But today, I decide to suck it up and ask about one semi-meaningful thing.
“Yesterday, when you were talking about selling the house,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “Do you think you’re really...ready for that?”
“Oh,” my mother says, uncomfortably. “I don’t know. I mean, look, it would be stupid not to at least consider it. I’m watching how fast all my clients’ homes are getting snapped up, feels silly not to think about. It’s a seller’s market, and it might just be, you know...time. To downsize. It’s more space than I need, it’s not as if Ana and Rosie would ever want the place...”
And it’s not as if I’ll ever have a family that might want it , I think, trying not to be wounded by the things my mother does and doesn’t say.
“Right, sure,” I say.
“Anyway,” she says. “We’ll see.”
“We’ll see,” I echo, sipping my water and wishing it was wine. I try to keep my voice steady. “Just seems like a...a lot of big changes, and...not easy stuff, so...”
My mother heaves her trademark sigh.
“I know this isn’t easy for you,” she says, flexing her fingers. They’re painted pale pink, gleaming and flawless. I’m not sure why, exactly, she needs to go get another manicure today. But what does my raggedy-nailed self know? “Rosie getting married, the whole thing. Everything. You know.”
My mother is not usually the one to have heart-to-heart chats with me. That was always my father’s job. I’m sure she wishes he was here right now, to handle this for her. To handle me for her.
Yeah, well—me, too, Mom.
“I’m thrilled for Rosie,” I say, a little too loudly. “I love Ana. It’s going to be a beautiful wedding.”
“I know it’s not ideal that it’s also on your birthday—”
“It’s not on my birthday. The wedding is on Saturday and my birthday’s on Sunday,” I say, hoping I sound breezy but probably sounding bitchy. “Honestly. Mom, you should know when my birthday is—”
“I know when your birthday is—”
“I know, I’m just teasing—”
“Well, it’s sometimes hard to tell when you’re teasing—”
“It’s not actually that hard to tell when I’m teasing—”
“Honey, please,” Mom says, biting her lip, a shiny wet spot of lipstick clinging to her front tooth. “We’re all...we’re all trying the best we can, right?”
She’s trying to stop our sniping from escalating into an argument. She’s trying to be gentle while she does it, which is a stretch for her. She’s usually the tough-love parent, the no-nonsense real estate agent who calls it as she sees it, for her clients and for her children. A good investment, a bad paint job, she’ll always just tell it like it is. I can see she’s making an effort. It’s just not enough.
But I don’t have the energy to fight.
“Right,” I say, making peace. “Sorry. I’m just hungry.”
“The salads are good,” my mother says.
“So I’ve heard,” I say, eyeing the pot pie on the menu.
“Have you been following your sister on the TikTok?” Mom asks.
“What?”
“I told you last week, she has this TikTok. Fitness videos. They’re very good, very popular. Some weirdos on there give her a hard time, but it’s mostly been very good for her. She’s making money for ‘influencing’ or something, I didn’t really understand it. But she had me get on TikTok so I could follow her. You should follow her, too. It helps with the algorithms.”
“What do you know about algorithms?” I ask incredulously.
“That they help your sister,” my mother says sternly. “Follow her, please.”
“Fine,” I say. I pull out my phone and turn it on.
“Was your phone off again?” Mom asks.
I ignore her and open up TikTok, which I wasn’t even sure I had on my phone. I think Bryan insisted on it at some point. I do a quick search for my sister’s name, and find her account immediately. “GoGo-RoRo” is grinning on a stationary bike in the first preview video. I hit Follow, then power my phone down again.
“Followed,” I say.
“Thank you,” says my mother.
She looks like she wants to say something else, but she doesn’t.
“Sure thing,” I say, grabbing the menu again. “So how’s the wedding stuff going? How much shit do you have to get done the next few days?”
“Not too much, all things considered,” she says with a wave of her well-maintained hand. “Rosie and Ana are both so organized, we’re in good shape. And Ana’s parents have picked up a lot of the slack. Nice things about two brides. Less conventional approach as far as who’s supposed to do what. Breath of fresh air.”
As her hands move gracefully to accentuate her words, I notice with a pang that she’s no longer wearing her wedding ring. Instead, on her left ring finger is a gleaming emerald, which I recognize as a ring my grandmother used to wear. I think there are Hebrew letters engraved on the inside of the band, although I can’t quite remember what they are.
For some reason I want to take the ring, to see the Hebrew letters, to slip it on to my own finger. I want to ask my mother why she’s wearing it, and why she’s not wearing her wedding ring. I want to ask her where she put the ring my father gave her.
Instead, I hear myself ask, “Do you think I’m going to die alone?”
My mother freezes. She stares at me for a long moment, then blinks slowly and seems to recover. She waves her hand in the air again, maybe summoning a server, maybe shooing away my question.
“What a question,” she mutters, and doesn’t answer it. “But that reminds me. Your date, for the wedding. You still won’t tell me who it is?”
“Still a surprise,” I say, relieved when a server appears to take our order.
The server has bright red curls cropped short in the back, long in the front, and a pert button nose. In her festive white-collared button-down shirt, she looks like a modern-day little orphan Annie, all grown up.
“Hi, I’m Annie, I’ll be taking care of you today,” she says, and I immediately feel bad for her. Her name really is Annie? I can only imagine how many times she’s been asked if the sun will come out tomorrow.
Mom asks for the Walnut Room salad, dressing on the side. I order Mrs. Hering’s 1890 Original Chicken Pot Pie, flaky, buttery crust and all, and ignore the sharp intake of my mother’s breath. I’m a grown-ass woman and I’ll do what I want. And if I have to buy some Spanx to fit into my bridesmaid’s attire, so be it.
We avoid eye contact for a long moment after putting our orders in. I look around the holiday scene. Since it’s a Tuesday, it’s busy, but not as bustling as it will be over the weekend. Families will come in from the suburbs to have actors in cheap purple chiffon fairy costumes sprinkle magic dust in their children’s hair, give them wishing stones, and promise them that Santa will bring them what their hearts desire.
There are no sugarplum fairies here today, though, and even amid all the bright seasonal decor, I notice a fracture in the alabaster molding in the wall near our table. And above that, rusty water stains line the ceiling. This place must have been stunning when it first opened its doors in the early 1900s. It’s still beautiful, but there are cracks in the facade. It’s easy to miss amid all the hustle and bustle, glitter and ornaments—but the place is long past its original glory days. The old girl could use some work—not just a surface-level touch-up, but some deeper, more foundational repairs.
“Anything else going on with you?” Mom asks at last. “Since you won’t tell me who your mystery date is.”
I thought I saw Bubbe on the train the other day , I think, thoughts tumbling around my brain like a washing machine reaching the height of its spin cycle. Which probably means I’m losing my mind. And there’s still no one special in my life. Plus I can’t seem to stop eating. No professional achievements to report. Basically, I’m feeling like a failure on every front. Oh, and hey, remember that guy who died last year? Do you think maybe, just maybe, we can finally talk about Dad?
“We’re expecting some layoffs at work,” is what I actually say.
I immediately regret this disclosure, even though it had seemed like the least worrisome thing I could share. I was hoping to distract my mother from the whole date thing, especially since I’m sweating now just thinking about asking Hot Josh to go with me. But as soon as I see her eyes widen, I realize my mistake.
“Oh my God, you’re losing your job?”
“Not me,” I say quickly, but the damage is done. I’ve inadvertently activated full-on Worried Jewish Mother Mode, and there’s no easy off switch for that setting once the switch has been flipped. “Some people might, but we don’t really know who—”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll be fine—”
“How’s your résumé? Do you need me to take a look at it? I can talk to my colleague Joan, her son works in advertising—or maybe it’s marketing, is that the same thing? Anyway, she says he makes a very nice living—”
“Mom,” I interrupt. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine. We’re all fine. Okay?”
“If you say so,” she says, looking slapped. She flexes her fingers again, examining her nails, and looks away from me.
This is the point in the conversation where Dad would step in, if he were here. Any time things turned emotional, my father was the one to take the wheel. My mother is organized, loyal, reliable, absolutely full of redeeming qualities. But she’s always been shit at acknowledging tension or, God forbid, difficult feelings.
Rena, let me in a little , my father used to say, gently tapping on my mother’s forehead. What’s going on in there?
I wonder if she ever actually let him in, or if she always just let out that great big sigh. She sure seems to keep the door locked when it comes to me. My whole life, it’s been hard to talk to my mother about anything emotional, but this past year it’s been impossible. We’ve never talked about my father since he died. None of us. We barely mention him at all.
It was so sudden, and we were all wrecked—Rosie, Mom, me. We were briefly united in the shock of our loss. For the strange blur of days in the immediate aftermath, we shared a common language. Our grief was unspoken but palpable. It was all we had. We held each other up, clutching elbows, hands on backs. We only wanted to be around each other. No one else understood just how much we had lost.
But after the funeral and seven stiff days of sitting shiva, we all retreated to our corners and busied ourselves with anything that allowed us to focus our minds somewhere else. I threw myself into work, started eating everything in sight, and stopped making any decisions. Rosie swiftly got engaged to Ana and began planning the wedding, making as many big, bold decisions as possible. Mom never stopped moving: aerobics classes, marathon training, house showings, manicures, book club. We all avoided talking about the one person we were so desperately missing; the one person who had tied us all together, and in whose absence we had begun the inevitable process of drifting apart.
“I want you to be happy for Rosie,” my mother says.
“I am,” I say, the words turning sour in my mouth.
“She needs you,” my mother says, again. I start to ask her what she means by that—what, exactly, she thinks Perfect Rosie needs from me. But I keep my mouth shut. “Anyway, the wedding is going to be lovely, it really is. Out at the camp, all that nature. Should be really nice.”
“Yep.”
“I’m glad it’s at the camp,” Mom says, taking out her lipstick and reapplying it without the aid of a mirror. “I’d be worried if it was at the temple, what with all the mishigas lately.”
“What mishigas ?” I ask. Mom rarely uses Yiddish, since it evokes her own mother. But this is one of our favorite words, since it sounds like what it is: mishigas . Messiness, craziness, utter foolishness.
“You didn’t hear?” Mom asks, and for half a second I think she’s going to tell me about some stupid drama about whether or not to allow bar mitzvah kids to twerk on the dance floor or something, but then she lowers her voice and says, “We got another bomb threat.”
I nearly fall out of my chair.
“Another—”
“Some bread for the table,” our little server Annie blithely interjects, approaching with a warm basket. “And some butter—”
“We don’t need all that,” my mother starts to say, but I’m already slathering a thick, creamy pat across a warm and comfortingly crusty roll.
The ginger waitress nods at my mother apologetically. Too late now. Then she winks at me and vanishes again.
“The temple’s gotten multiple bomb threats?” I ask around a mouthful of bread.
“Yeah,” my mother says, and I’m genuinely unsure if the mildly disgusted look on her face is regarding the antisemitic threat or my inhalation of the evil carbs. “Last year it was just an email. The FBI said it was not credible or whatever. But this time, some neo-Nazi asshole called up the office during Sunday School last week.”
“During Sunday School? Holy shit. So there were kids in the building—”
“They evacuated everyone. SWAT team came, the whole bit. There wasn’t a bomb. Just a threat. But still, with all these troublemakers, maybe not the greatest time for a wedding, big crowds, all that...”
“Holy shit,” I say again, not sure what else to say. “How was this not in the news?”
“I guess because we didn’t actually get bombed,” Mom says. “But, you know. When they’re really going to bomb you, they don’t usually call first.”
“That’s not funny,” I say, but my mother just shrugs. Somehow this response unsettles me even more. I shake my head, still stunned. “Is there going to be a cop car in the parking lot from now on, like at the high holidays?”
For the biggest holidays on the Jewish calendar, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, more people pour into synagogues than at any other time of the year. Throughout my childhood, I didn’t think anything at all about the fact that on those days, there were always two or three squad cars on hand, directing traffic into the parking lot, watching everyone enter the building, being visibly present.
It didn’t occur to me until I was well into my twenties that this security measure wasn’t one taken by all religious groups. The megachurch right across the street from us never had a police presence back then—although I’m pretty sure they have an armed guard these days. I guess it’s just the world we live in, which is a brutal thought.
But my mother is shaking her head.
“No, actually,” she says. “No police presence. That was the decision. We had a town hall about it right away—the next morning. It’s a diverse congregation, you know. Diverse community, Evanston. So. People were saying how not everyone feels safer with police around. Which hadn’t even occurred to me, if I’m being honest.”
“Oh,” I say, not admitting that it hadn’t initially occurred to me, either.
“We wouldn’t want one of our Hebrew High teens to show up, ‘look suspicious,’ and have a bad interaction with the police or something,” Mom continues, twisting her white cloth napkin in her pale, painted fingernails. “We wouldn’t want someone getting hurt, just because someone else felt nervous.”
“Yeah,” I say automatically. “Of course. But so...what are they going to do, then? To keep everyone safe?”
“They’re bringing in some security expert to do some trainings or something, and we’re updating the locks and whatnot. But no cops. For now.”
I nod, feeling sick at all the hard decisions my mother’s community is having to make. My community, even if I haven’t been very involved lately. I can’t separate myself from this fear, but it feels surreal. There have only been a handful of times in my life where I’ve felt threatened for being Jewish. Antisemitism buzzes in the background of my life, ever present but usually brushed away like a pesky fly. Sure, people make stupid jokes and ignorant assumptions. Sure, it sucks to be a Jew on the internet, but it also sucks to be a woman or gay or Black or a hundred other things on the internet. Sure, synagogues are targets of bomb threats now and then.
But it’s not supposed to happen at the synagogue where I had my bat mitzvah. The building where my parents spent every single Friday night, for the entirety of their marriage. The community that meant so much to my father that he served as the congregation president for a decade, his portrait hanging in the hallway with all the other past presidents of the temple. I imagine his picture in the hallway and my mother sitting in her pew, alone, prayer book in hand, one eye on the door. My gut clenches.
“Are you...still going to services Friday night?” I ask.
“Every week,” my mother says, tilting her chin defiantly. “No chickenshit neo-Nazi schmuck’s gonna take away my temple.”
For the first time in a while, I smile at my mother.
She can drive me up the wall, but she’s tough as hell.
I wish I had half her chutzpah.
“Maybe I’ll join you sometime soon,” I say.
“You should! Rosie and Ana came last Friday night,” Mom says. “It was nice. Rosie did one of her TikTok things about coming home for Shabbat at her childhood synagogue. We all went out to dinner after services.”
“Oh,” I say stiffly, a spiraling stab of jealousy twisting through me.
I only live half an hour away, but this was the first I was hearing about dinner and services last Friday. Or the bomb threat on Sunday. If Dad were still alive, I would have been included in all of those updates, good and bad. It’s hard not to feel resentful at all the obvious ways my remaining family is excluding me.
“Anyway,” Mom says, lifting an eyebrow. “If you come for services, any chance it’ll be with your mystery wedding date? I can drive you both, I’m going straight from the rehearsal dinner to the temple, and the rabbi’s going to do a blessing for Rosie and Ana—”
“We’ll see,” I say, and then I remember. The stupid cruise. Which I still want to skip, but it’s also occurring to me that doing so might be a bad look. “If the rehearsal dinner gets out in time, there’s actually this office party I should probably go to. Doesn’t seem like the time to skip out on office socializing, with the cutbacks and all.”
“Oh,” says my mother, looking doubtful. “Well...if you’re worried about losing your job, I guess, but...it’s the wedding weekend...”
“And I’ll be at everything I need to be at,” I say, a little sharper than intended.
“I just...” says my mother, then she exhales and seems to change course. “Where’s the office party? Is it near the restaurant?”
“Not far,” I say, since the rehearsal dinner is at a nice new-American place in the Loop. “It’s on a boat. River cruise.”
“In December?” Mom says, appalled.
“Yep,” I confirm.
“That’s crazy.”
“I know.”
She points a finger at me.
“You be careful. And do not catch a cold.”