Chapter 45
45
“We’re doing Dry January,” Rosie says, a dainty gin and tonic clutched tightly in her fingers. Her nails are still pretty, although the wedding manicure is beginning to chip at the edges. My own nails are unpainted, but clean. “Ana thinks it’ll be good for us. So this is my last hurrah.”
We’re at Boka, one of my favorite neighborhood spots for a fancy cocktail. It’s New Year’s Eve, but only two in the afternoon, so it’s not too crowded. When Rosie and Ana were still on their mini-moon in Malibu (their full honeymoon will be this summer, backpacking through Europe), Rosie had texted to ask if we could meet up for a drink. They flew in and out of Chicago, and she wanted to squeeze in a one-on-one visit before they returned to St. Louis.
“Dry January, huh?” I say. “You really are an old married lady.”
“I really am married, apparently,” Rosie says, smiling brightly. But then an odd expression passes across her face. “But... God, this so embarrassing... The thing is... I barely remember the wedding reception.”
I give her a funny look. I can’t tell if she’s joking or not. After a lifetime of intermittent bickering, and a very fresh commitment to improving our relationship, I don’t want to respond incorrectly to whatever she’s trying to tell me.
“What do you mean?” I ask carefully.
“I mean...” Rosie shakes her head, seeming genuinely baffled. “It’s just, like—I remember the morning, getting ready, all of the decorations. I remember the ceremony, mostly, although I think it all felt like a dream even in the moment. And I remember your speech, which really was wonderful. But...that’s it.”
“That’s...it?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” says Rosie, almost embarrassed. “It’s funny, so many people told me, ‘Your wedding day will just be a blur,’ but I had no idea it would be a complete and total blur. The weird thing is, it’s the same for Ana. She says it’s a blank for her after your speech. That’s why we’re doing Dry January, honestly. Seems like we overdid it.”
“Oh,” I say, mind reeling as I try to keep up with what she’s telling me.
She—and Ana—really don’t remember anything?
About the golem?
The gunman?
Any of it?
“What about Ethan?” I ask.
“Ethan!” Rosie’s eyes widen, and she nods. “Oh my God, yes! Someone mentioned Ethan getting into a fistfight with your date. Apparently Ethan really got his ass handed to him. I don’t know how I missed that. What the hell happened?”
“I...don’t know,” I say, then add, “Ethan made a pass at me, maybe that’s why—”
“Ugh, what a prick,” Rosie says, taking a sip of her drink and seeming relieved to ease in to more familiar conversational territory. “I hate that he’s going to be front and center in all the wedding pictures. Sorry you had to walk down the aisle with him.”
“No worries,” I say, still utterly confused.
How can Rosie and Ana have blacked out on the whole debacle?
“So is that why you and what’s-his-name split?” Rosie asks, almost shyly. We’re not used to talking like this: sharing secrets, digging for details. It takes me a minute to realize that by what’s-his-name, she means Paul Mudd. “Because he had a temper?”
“Basically, yeah,” I say, feeling a brief return of my stomach-clenching anxiety.
“Well, then, good riddance,” says Rosie. “You deserve better than that.”
“I... Thanks,” I say, smiling tentatively at my sister. “Hey, you want to maybe share an appetizer or something?”
An hour somehow flies by, which never happens when we’re spending time together. It’s a pleasant surprise to realize Rosie is someone I can actually enjoy spending time with. But right after I signal the waiter to request our check, my sister turns to me with a slightly nervous look. All of a sudden I’m worried the nice little house of cards we’ve been stacking all night is about to get blown over.
“Hey, there is this one other thing,” Rosie says. “Layla—who really did go overboard at happy hour; she barely remembers a thing, either—she said the one thing she remembers from the wedding is you said something shitty about her mom.”
“About her mom?” I ask, lost again. “I don’t even know her mom.”
“But you know she’s her caretaker,” Rosie says. When I shake my head, she goes on, “Layla’s mom was living with her and Amir for the past two years. That’s why Layla had to leave her doctoral program.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling awful. “Is it cancer, or...?”
“Alzheimer’s,” says Rosie, shaking her head. “Layla wanted to keep her mom at home with them for as long as possible, but the dementia was getting so bad, they had to move her into a facility, like, a month ago. She said you made some comment about without memories, what’s the point...?”
“Oh, God,” I say, remembering the moment in the hallway. While everyone else seems to have blurred out that awful night, every moment of it is rushing back to me now. “I think I did say something like that, but like—that’s totally not what I meant. Honestly, I didn’t know anything about her mom. I didn’t know Layla was dealing with all that.”
I had, in fact, assumed that Layla was a beautiful and spacey grad school dropout who decided to focus on fitness instead of sticking with school. She was one of the many people I’d written off without knowing their whole story, because I was wallowing so miserably in my own. It’s yet another awful realization.
“I think the fact she’s gone through hell, too, is why she was able to show up for me so much,” Rosie says, voice cracking a little. “She’s been...she’s been a really good friend to me.”
I remember how Layla came to the funeral, and to shiva. I think of all the times Rosie texted me, and I didn’t get back to her—but Layla probably did. I feel guilty, and also grateful. I’m glad my sister has a friend like that.
“Please tell her I’m sorry,” I say, stomach grinding uncomfortably. “I didn’t mean that. At all.”
“You tell her,” Rosie says. “We’ll have both of you over when you come visit St. Louis.”
“Oh, am I coming to visit you in St. Louis?”
“Yeah.” Rosie smiles. “Winter’s beautiful in Missouri.”
I chuckle, warmed even amid all the confusion.
“Okay,” I say.
“She’ll forgive you,” Rosie says. “Layla’s pretty great.”
“I’m actually kind of—jealous of her,” I say, surprised at my own honesty.
“Why are you jealous of Layla?” Rosie asks, her delicate brows drawing together in confusion.
“Because you two are close,” I say. “And because...she has her shit together. Same reason I’m jealous of you, honestly.”
“That’s wild,” says Rosie. “The idea of you being jealous of me for a change.”
“Wait, what?” I say, baffled. “When have you ever been jealous of me?”
“Um, my whole life?” Rosie says, cocking her head. “You’re my big sister. You were always so good at everything I wasn’t—school, Hebrew school, having a ‘real career’ and whatever. How was I supposed to compete with any of that? Plus, you always had all the inside jokes with Dad...” Rosie hesitates. “I know how much you miss him.”
It comes out of nowhere, but it also comes out of everywhere. An instinct to protect my sister shudders through me. I can see how much she’s hurting, and I’m done looking away.
“I know how much you miss him, too,” I say, reaching for her hand.
“I really do,” she says, eyes going glassy. “And, like... I don’t know. He was just—like, he was the one person who could always make me laugh. Like when he did his impressions of Bubbe.”
“Oh, God,” I say. “Those impressions were terrible.”
“But so funny,” she says. “Honestly, I think that’s why I always thought of Bubbe as kind of funny. Because the way Dad saw her, she was. All her spielkes and weird stories and everything was...endearing, the way Dad saw it. The way he saw everyone made them seem a little better, or easier, or funnier than they actually were. I miss that.”
“I miss that, too.”
We sit there for a moment, just holding hands. At first, all I can think about is the man we’re missing. How relieved Dad would be, to see us together like this, working on our relationship. But then everything else Rosie just told me tugs at my thoughts again.
“You really don’t remember your wedding reception?” I finally ask. “Like, at all?”
“I wish I did,” she says.
Don’t be so sure , I think, still perplexed but not wanting to press the issue.
After we tab out, I text my mother and ask if she’s up for a quick visit. Half an hour later I’m curled up on the couch in her Winnetka living room. Mom is in a track suit, folding laundry, a task she continues throughout our conversation.
“How was your happy hour with Rosie?”
“It was good,” I say, grateful to be able to answer honestly.
“I’m glad,” says my mother, folding a fitted sheet in a way I’ll never understand. “It’s so important to me that you two...have each other.”
“Yeah,” I say, and even though I came over to ask her something else, I find myself finally giving voice to a question that’s burdened me for more than a year: “Mom, when Dad...when Dad died. I never asked...how it all happened. Was he awake, were you able to...?”
I trail off, unable to go on.
My mother presses the fitted sheet to her chest, and closes her eyes.
“He was still awake when we got to the hospital,” she says. “We were both a little worried, but still joking, just talking. Neither of us knew how bad it was yet. We had absolutely no idea.”
I tremble, watching her.
I want to know, and I don’t want to know.
“They took him back for some tests, and that’s when...that’s when his heart started failing. There was all this activity, I had a sense even from out in the hallway that something was going on, and then they brought me in and his eyes were closed and they told me they had lost his pulse for several minutes. That he was there, but that...he probably wouldn’t ever wake up. But they told me he might be able to hear me...”
The air in Mom’s warm living room feels so cold.
A single tear slips down her cheek—mine, too.
“I knew there wouldn’t be time for you and Rosie to get there,” she whispers. “So I told him how much we all loved him. You. RoRo. Me. Everyone. And when I ran out of words, there was this kind young man—I don’t know if he was a nurse or an aide or a what, but he said we could put on music for a few minutes. He had a little Bluetooth speaker, and when he turned it on, it started playing Christmas music. He said I’m sorry, I know the paperwork says he’s Jewish, let me change it—but I said no. He loved Christmas music. He and his baby girl, they both always loved...”
My mother’s voice gives out, her eyes still closed.
I stand up, and wrap my arms around her.
Our tears are silent, and so are we.
I wish I had been there.
But now I know, some part of me was.
Just like some part of him is always, always here.
“Thank you for asking,” whispers my mother.
“Thank you for telling me,” I whisper back.
“You know,” she says, “I love you just as much as he did.”
I nod.
I know.
It’s different.
But I know.
“And I know you don’t like having your phone on,” she says. “But if you could maybe keep it on a little more often? For my sake.”
“I’m working on it,” I promise.
“Okay,” she says.
I wind up staying for dinner. Salad, unsurprisingly, but it’s actually pretty good. For salad. After we’ve cleared the plates from the table, I reluctantly tell my mother that I should go before the holiday traffic gets terrible. And then I make myself ask the question I’d initially come to pose.
“Hey, Mom—this might sound weird, but...how much do you remember about Rosie’s wedding reception?”
“You know, it’s the funniest thing,” my mother says. “Everything after your speech is a little fuzzy. I guess champagne hits me harder now than it used to. I remember how I felt, though. So proud. It was a good night. Rosie and Ana, they looked so happy. That’s the part I’ll never forget.”
“Yeah,” I say, feeling like I’m losing my mind.
“Oh, speaking of forgetting!” Mom says, and sets a neatly folded towel down beside me on the couch. “You left your coat at the camp, it wound up in my car. Here, let me get it for you before I forget—that one you wore here today, it’s not warm enough, you’ll catch cold.”
She walks to her front hall closet and hands me my coat.
I shrug it on, hugging my mother before slipping my hands into its pockets. My fingers brush something crinkly. I pull out a small, crumpled gift.
“Your cute neighbor gave you whatever that is,” Mom says, eyes sparkling. “I found it in my car and put it in the pocket for you.”
“Oh,” I say, cheeks warming. “Thanks.”
“Josh, right? You should have brought him to the wedding.”
I tried , I think, but I obviously can’t tell my mother that. I almost ask her how much she remembers about the guy I did bring, but decide maybe it’s best to let this particular sleeping dog lie.
“What is it?” Mom asks, nodding to the little present.
“I don’t know,” I mumble, shoving it back into my pocket. “I’ll open it later.”
If it’s something mortifying, I don’t want to open it in front of my mother. Somehow the golem incident seems largely erased from people’s minds, but I can’t count on that kind of luck in other situations.
Suddenly, a thought occurs to me: Sasha.
I have to ask Sasha what she knows about all this golem-forgetting stuff.
We’re already supposed to have brunch tomorrow, with Bryan. The long-awaited return of Bestie Brunch. I decide to text her and see if maybe she can meet me half an hour early so we can talk alone.
The next morning, I take the train toward Lakeview for brunch. My thoughts are all over the place. Sasha agreed to meet me early, so we could talk. But I’m still not sure exactly how to ask her about what’s on my mind.
Hey, remember how we both built monsters instead of dealing with our shit? Did everyone forget about yours? Or did you actually never make a golem, and I’m just fully losing my mind and made up that part, too?
“Baby, cover your mouth when you cough, please.”
The words come from a woman with coppery hair piled atop her head. She’s standing across the aisle from me, wearing a tiny infant in a moss-colored linen carrier, and also holding the hand of a little boy. He’s maybe two or three years old, and he’s the one who coughed. He obediently lifts his little elbow, coughing into its crook, and his mother crinkles her nose at him.
There’s something familiar about her. Then I remember: I’d given my seat up to her two weeks earlier, when she was exceedingly pregnant. The same strange day I’d seen both Santa and the ghost of my grandmother on the brown line. I wonder why she’s already back on the train, with such a young baby, and the coughing toddler. Are they going to the doctor? Something routine, or more worrisome?
The young mother catches me looking at her, and gives me a tired smile. But there’s no recognition in her eyes. She doesn’t remember me having given up my seat for her, nor should she. I hope a thousand people gave up their seat for her when she needed to get off her feet. I hope so many small favors are done for her that they all just blur together. Suddenly, my fierce hope is that most good deeds go unnoticed, because their frequency makes them commonplace. That feels like the sort of world my dad was trying to help create, and I want to do that, too.
We’ll keep each other safe , I want to tell the woman with the two small children. I want your kids to be okay.
But instead, I just smile back at her, and get off at the next stop.
Sasha is already seated at our table when I arrive. The brunch spot is packed; only a handful of places were open on New Year’s Day, and we were lucky to get a table at this one. It’s called Shine, and it will probably be closed before the next New Year rolls around, but for now it’s full of sparkling lights and bottomless mimosas.
“I have to ask you about something,” I say before I even sit down.
“Let me guess,” Sasha says. “Everyone’s forgetting your golem.”
“How?” is all I can manage in reply.
“No idea,” she says. “I wanted to give it a few days, make sure it happened for you, too. But I think it’s just a thing. If you think about all the legends of the golem, which of course I used to think were just stories...they’re all told by the rabbis who built them. No reference to random rampaging Jew-saving monsters in the history books. Golems are a shadowy thing, and they just sort of become shadowy in people’s memories. Maybe that’s why they’re depicted as mud monsters. No one remembers what they really look like. If it’s anything like it was for me, people will kind-of remember you had a date named Paul, but that’ll be about it. How much do you remember about Emmet?”
I try to remember Sasha’s ex-boyfriend—her golem, I remind myself—and find that I can’t. Not really. I just kind of remember a quiet, tallish guy in a baseball cap.
“Basically nothing,” I say.
“Bingo,” she says.
We order mimosas.
It doesn’t take long for us to piece together how easy it is for all evidence of the golem to be erased. A white supremacist named Tim Reeves was arrested on the campus of Camp Heller-Diamond that night, but none of the guests remember him being there, and his concussion gives a reason for him forgetting everything, too. The cell reception at the camp sucked, so the whole time he was live streaming his actions...nothing actually made it to TikTok. Everyone else’s phones were in the lacy basket until the main action was over. Ethan was hospitalized with a broken nose and some busted ribs, and remembers getting shit-housed and hitting on some muscle-bro’s girlfriend . Everything having to do with the golem has blurred at the edges for everyone.
“So we really got away with it,” I say, bewildered.
“I mean, kinda,” Sasha says. “I don’t feel great about it.”
“Me, neither,” I agree. “I mean...we’re two smart, capable, grown-ass women. How did we think it was okay?”
“Because everything’s hard,” Sasha says. “Being a smart, capable, grown-ass woman is hard. Living on this planet is hard. The world’s a dumpster fire. Your dad died. I got mugged on the way home from work—”
“You what?” I ask, horrified.
“Yeah. Dude took my phone and wallet, twisted my wrist when he grabbed it from me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Sasha says, exhaling sharply. “I just hit a wall, when that happened. Being a woman, being Black, being Jewish, living alone, staying late at work, pandemics, protests, blah blah blah. It was just all more than I could handle for a minute there. So I, you know. Thought outside the box.”
“Creative problem solvers, that’s us,” I say weakly.
“Yeah,” Sasha says, shaking her head. “But like. Everyone’s got shit they’re dealing with, all the time. Can’t use that as an excuse to become part of the problem. At some point you just realize... oh, so that’s life .”
“Yeah,” I agree. “It’s like...if you’re not the saddest one in the room right now, you will be someday.”
“Right,” says Sasha. “So let’s go easier on people. And on ourselves. And, you know. No more making golems. Deal?”
“Deal,” I say quickly. Then, voice trembling: “I really thought it was only me.”
“Me, too,” says Sasha. She sets down her mimosa, leaning back in her chair. For a moment, the old look of exhaustion crosses her face, adding angles to her already-high cheekbones. “Worst lie we tell ourselves.”
I nod, swallowing the thick knot in my throat.
“But we don’t have to feel so alone,” Sasha adds, leaning forward again. Closing the distance, making sure I can see just how serious she is about this. “Not when we know we’ve always got backup. Right?”
My stomach tightens, but doesn’t make a sound. Like it doesn’t want to tell on me; not this time. But I do want to reassure Sasha, to let her know beyond the shadow of a doubt that she does have backup. Whenever she needs it. To let her know how serious I am about this, too.
“Right,” I say at last.
She smiles, reaching again for her mimosa. Her shoulders ease, her face softening once more. I wait another few seconds.
And then I ask her the other thing I’ve been dying to know.
“Um. Did you sleep with Emmet?”
Sasha raises an eyebrow.
“Did you sleep with Paul?”
“I asked you first.”
She sips her mimosa, then gives the slightest nod.
I sip my mimosa, and give her the same sly nod.
“...It was good, huh,” Sasha says.
“Yeah,” I say, flushing at the memory. “It was really good.”
“But also bad,” Sasha adds quickly.
“Oh yes, obviously, very bad.”
“Like you got the world’s best vibrator, but after you use it, it starts randomly electrocuting other people,” Sasha muses.
I laugh.
She laughs.
And that, too, feels really, really good.
“Hey, what are we laughing about?” Bryan says, entering red-faced and rubbing his hands together. “It’s cold as shit out there, by the way. But at least it’s finally snowing.”
“It is?”
I look outside, and sure enough, fat, silvery flakes are floating from the sky. After all these cold, dry months, the sight of snow warms something deep within me. I smile at my friends.
“Just talking girl-talk,” Sasha says.
“I love girl-talk,” says Bryan. “But I do have some actually huge news, like massive, and I don’t know how to ease in to it so I’m just going to say it, okay oh my God, here it is: Carlos and I have been trying for almost two years to adopt and we don’t bring it up because it’s hard and scary and jinxy but we got picked by this woman who just had her baby and we’re picking the baby up tomorrow and she’s going to be ours and her name is Chela and Carlos is researching formula right now and I can only stay for like an hour because we have to build a crib but Carlos told me I had to come and tell you in person and I’m so happy and excited and terrified because holy shit you guys I’m gonna be a dad .”
Sasha and I are silent for less than a nanosecond, and then we scream with joy and pounce on him, everything else forgotten. Bryan’s crying and we’re crying and our server comes by and then says he’ll be back if we need a moment. We’re laughing and wiping our eyes and asking a million questions.
The whole time, I’m wondering, how did I not know about the most important things going on with my friends? It’s like we’ve all been taking the publicly shared headlines of each other’s lives at face value instead of digging deeper. Like cranky Boomers cruising Facebook and sharing posts without checking sources, blissfully riding the waves of confirmation bias. My friends didn’t know how much I was really dealing with, but also, I didn’t know how much they were really dealing with, because it’s so easy to just keep things surface level. Do a cursory check-in, hit the proverbial like button, and just move on.
I don’t want to do that anymore.
“So anyway,” says Bryan. “I’m just really hoping I don’t screw this up.”
I look at my friend, awed that he’s about to become a father. A warmth spreads through my chest as I think of my own father. I miss him so much; it’s an ache that will always be with me. But I am so grateful that out of all the dads in the world, he’s the one I got. And thanks to him, I know exactly what to say.
“You’ve got this, Bry.”
As I’m leaving brunch, the snow begins falling more heavily. I put my hands in my pockets, and feel the unopened little gift once more. When I’m seated on the train, I open it. Nestled in the crinkled wrapping paper, there are two small plastic rings—one green, one yellow—and a note: “Maybe these will help you open the right door the first time around from now on.”
Color covers for my keys, I realize. The gift is so small, but somehow manages to be clever and thoughtful and useful.
I haven’t talked to Hot Josh since the wedding; he left town the next day to spend the week working remotely from Milwaukee, to get in some time with his daughters since he missed seeing them over the weekend. But he should be home by now.
Covered in a thin film of snow, I’m nervous when I knock on his door. But when Josh opens it, the nerves begin to shift into something more like excitement. Hope.
“Hey,” I say, holding up the color covers. “Thanks for these.”
“You’re welcome,” he says. “You’re, er, supposed to put them on your keys, you realize.”
“I thought maybe you could help me with that.”
He smiles, brown eyes twinkling at me, and opens the door wide enough to invite me all the way in.