Chapter 10 Days of Awe #2
Hidden in the kitchen wall stands the refrigerator, but all the milk is Lactaid, so Lily drinks tap water.
She leans over and sticks her head under the faucet so she doesn’t have to use a glass.
After that, she throws away the plastic wrap and brushes the cake crumbs into the sink and washes them down the drain.
She rinses the knife and dries it with a paper towel and puts it away.
She is afraid someone will walk in and scold her—but no one does.
Only in the distance she can hear running water. Someone’s shower.
She jumps onto the white couch and opens Ballet Shoes, which she has read a hundred times.
She has read all the shoe books by Noel Streatfeild—Tennis Shoes, Circus Shoes, Skating Shoes, Theatre Shoes, but Ballet Shoes is her favorite.
It’s about orphans in England who make a pact to be famous. They are sisters and they make a vow.
—
“Good morning, sweetheart.” Grandpa Lew is already dressed and standing over her.
“Hi.” Startled, she looks up at him.
“I said good morning.” Grandpa Lew has a thing about greeting people properly. He has a lot of things.
“Good morning,” Lily answers.
“Ready for the onslaught?”
She closes her book. “I wish we could stay here.”
“You and me both,” Lew tells her.
It’s weird, because he is an adult so if he doesn’t want to do something he doesn’t have to. Why would a grown-up drive somewhere he doesn’t want to go?
Once again Sylvia and Lew and Richard and the girls take two cars to the temple. Lily’s father and grandfather are wearing dark suits and Sylvia is wearing a white suit with rough edges, like the fabric is going to unravel. Her skirt is narrow, and her pocketbook has its own gold feet.
Lily is wearing her white cardigan again, but this time her dress is black.
She stares at her sandals as the service rolls over her.
There is nothing to do and nothing to read but the prayer book with Hebrew on one side and English on the other.
While the cantor sings about being poor, trembling, and unworthy, Lily leans forward and rests her head on the pew with the plaque for Jeanne.
“Lily?” her dad whispers. “Are you okay?”
“I think I’m getting carsick again,” she whispers back.
“Oh, please,” Sophie says.
But everyone else thinks she might actually throw up and that can’t happen. Not in the sanctuary.
“She needs to eat,” Richard tells Grandma Sylvia.
“Dad, she is not sick,” Sophie protests.
“Shh.”
“She’s just trying to get out of here,” Sophie whispers furiously.
“She’s white as a sheet,” says Grandpa Lew.
Richard says, “I think she’s got to have some lunch.”
“I’ll take her.” Sylvia is already picking up her pocketbook.
“It’s okay, Mom. I can take her out,” says Richard.
“No, I’ll go.” Sylvia leads Lily between the pews, into the social hall. Grandma Sylvia’s heels tap the terrazzo floor out of the temple, past the police and into the parking lot.
“Where are we…” Lily begins.
“Not now.”
“But can I ask you something?”
“Lily. I have a splitting headache. Get in the car.”
Usually, Grandma Sylvia calls you darling.
She says you and your sister are the apple of my eye, and Lily thinks wouldn’t that be apples?
Sylvia says she always wanted a daughter of her own, but it wasn’t in the cards.
That’s why she is so happy to have two granddaughters.
When they were little she bought them dolls and now she takes them clothes shopping—not for school clothes but for party dresses.
She helped Lily pick out her Bat Mitzvah dress and silver sandals.
Even with a headache, she is the fanciest person Lily knows.
That’s why it’s strange to drive up to McDonald’s.
“We’re going to eat here?” Lily cannot picture her grandma sitting at one of those tables.
What if she gets ketchup on her unraveled sleeves?
Where will she put the pocketbook? But Grandma Sylvia knows what she is doing.
She eases her Lexus into the drive-thru and orders, “One hamburger, one small fries. One large coffee, black.”
“Wait,” Lily says, because she is not allowed to drink coffee, but Sylvia ignores her.
“Anything else?” the lady inside asks.
Lily ventures, “One medium strawberry milkshake.”
“Do you want whipped cream on that?” the lady asks.
Sylvia answers for Lily. “No thank you.”
“Will that be all?”
“Yes.” With a jingle of bracelets, Grandma Sylvia is pulling out her wallet.
They place the drinks in the cupholders between them, and Lily gobbles down her burger and fries. She eats and eats, and the whole time, she is staring at Grandma Sylvia, who is sipping the black coffee. “I thought you were fasting.”
“I am fasting,” Sylvia informs her.
It’s raining lightly, and they are not returning to the temple. “Where are we going?”
“To visit my parents.” Sylvia’s voice is so strange that for a moment Lily is afraid of her. Her eyes are hard; her face is old. Lily feels almost kidnapped.
“How can we visit your parents?” Lily says, because they are dead. Then she sees the signs. They are driving to a cemetery.
“I thought they lived in Brooklyn.”
Grandma Sylvia parks the car. “First they lived in Brooklyn, and then they moved to Brookline. Coolidge Corner! They died at Hebrew SeniorLife, and this is where they’re buried. Come on out. No. Leave the milkshake.”
Lily steps out of the car. Slowly, she follows her grandma into the cemetery with its rows of gravestones.
“Stay on the path,” Sylvia warns, and Lily realizes with a shock that when you walk on the grass you are stepping on bodies.
She looks at the gentle mounds of earth and imagines all the dead people, lying on their backs. Face up. Toes up.
“Hurry,” says Sylvia because it’s drizzly and they have no umbrella.
Lily buttons up her little sweater. “Here we are,” her grandma tells her.
They are facing two black granite gravestones.
“You see,” Sylvia says. “This is my father, Morris.” She stands silently before the grave.
She is quiet for so long that Lily turns to look at her.
“He was a wonderful wonderful man,” Sylvia says.
“So patient. You know, he was a cardiologist. For many many years he practiced medicine at Beth Israel. All his life he healed people’s hearts.
That’s his Hebrew name, Mordechai Yaacov. Can you read it?”
Lily sounds out the Hebrew letters. “Mor-de-chai Ya-a-cov.”
“And here you are,” her grandma tells her.
“Me?”
“Great-Grandma Lillian. And here’s your Hebrew name. Leah Channah.”
Lily stares at her namesake’s gravestone. “Take a rock,” her grandma tells her.
Lily finds a pebble. “Not that one. That’s too small!” Sylvia sounds insulted.
Lily pries a bigger rock from the mud. It’s round on the bottom but rough on top. “Go ahead,” Sylvia says. “Put it right there.”
Cautiously, Lily places the rock on top of Lillian’s granite stone.
“And now one for Great-Grandpa Morris,” Sylvia says.
Lily finds another rock and places that one too. Then she looks up hopefully, but her grandma isn’t done. She just stands there.
At last, Sylvia sighs. “Well, here we are.”
Lily says, “Yes.”
“It’s a cold, cold day.”
“Really cold,” Lily agrees.
“And I miss you,” Sylvia says.
Then Lily realizes that her grandma isn’t talking to her.
She is talking to her parents in their graves.
“I miss confiding in you,” Sylvia says. “I miss your advice. I’m not like Jeanne and Helen.
I don’t always know better than everybody else.
And now Jeanne is gone, and Helen might as well be.
” Her voice trembles. “I would forgive her, but she won’t let me. ”
For several minutes, Sylvia stands there. When she speaks again, her voice is wobbly. “We’re scattered. Some of us in Boston, some in New Jersey. Brooklyn. I hardly see Richard and the girls.”
“Grandma?” Lily says, because she is right here.
Sylvia amends, “Except for the occasional holiday.” She opens her pocketbook and extracts her phone.
Is she texting Lily’s dad? Is she going to tell him we’re on our way back and not to worry?
No. She holds up her phone to show photos to Morris and Lillian lying underground.
“This is the dinner we had for Lew’s old law clerks.
That was a wonderful occasion. This is Lew making a speech.
And here’s a picture of us at CJP—the fundraiser.
We went to Paris in April. These are all photos from that trip.
Here is Notre-Dame. And the Tuileries. See the fountain?
We met a wonderful couple who know the Goldbergs.
These were our peonies this year. The best we’ve ever had.
” Sylvia lingers over the next picture, and then she pans her phone from left to right so that both graves can get a look.
“This is the girls and Cousin Phoebe and her boyfriend Wyatt at Tanglewood. We had a lovely time.”
If Lily had her phone she would be texting her mom help!
Because does her grandma really believe her parents can see these pictures and hear what she is telling them?
Is she going crazy? “Mother, I made the Grossinger honey cake,” Sylvia says.
“It was perfect, but I used walnuts. You don’t like them, but they add something. Right, Lily?”
Lily nearly jumps.
“I have Lily here,” Sylvia tells her parents. “Lily, do you have anything to say?”
Lily shakes her head.
“You’ve got a Bat Mitzvah next month,” Sylvia prompts.
“Do you want to tell about that?” But all Lily wants to do is run away.
“She’s shy,” Sylvia says. “She doesn’t like to talk.
We’re hoping she grows out of that.” She frowns at Lily.
“All right, that’s it,” Sylvia tells her parents.
“Just remember, I think about you all the time.”