Chapter 20
Callie had been playing quietly in her room.
“What time should we have dinner?” I asked when she turned up on the lower level.
“After you visit my library.”
“We went already. We’ll visit again in a few days, return the books, find new ones.”
“Not that library, not the Woodfield library. My library.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, so I trailed her to her room. She’d made a sign in black crayon on yellow colored paper and taped it to the door. L IbrARY . O PEN NOW . In her room, she’d stacked up the ten books we’d checked out and added a bunch of her own.
“Which book would you like?” she asked.
I thumbed through the choices, showing great interest in them one at a time. As I read from a Golden Book, she said, “I’m sorry, but you need to hurry because the librarian is about to read to the children.” She pointed to the rug, where stuffed animals were arranged in a circle.
I chose a picture book about how to look after your grandma. She told me it was a good choice but too easy for someone at my reading level.
To keep up the charade, I said I wanted it anyway. She recommended a Baby-Sitters Club book and passed it to me.
Callie then unfastened an old-fashioned steamer trunk brimming with costumes, hats, and masks. She chose spectacles hanging on a chain. She held up Where the Sidewalk Ends , displaying the cover to me and the “children.” She read a few pages, then said the library was offering a snack. She handed me one of the Oreos she had stashed under her bed. I’d never heard of anyone playing library. I congratulated myself on having such an imaginative granddaughter. And since her other grandmother had a book club without a book, it was apparent her love of reading had come from me.
“Okay, now we can have dinner, but I want to help make it,” she said.
“Hamburgers or mac ’n’ cheese?”
“Mac,” she said. “Because I’m Mac.”
“And it’s Friday night, so we’ll light the candles.”
“That’s romantic. Mom says candles are romantic.”
“These candles are the ones Jewish people light on Friday night to welcome the Sabbath.”
“Mom doesn’t do that,” Callie said.
Clearly Lisa had no interest in imparting any of the religion she grew up with to her child.
“I know. But I do. And I’d love to do it with you.”
“How many do we light?”
“How about two? One for me and one for you.”
I boiled a pot of water and drained the macaroni. Callie added powdered cheese, milk, butter, stirring it together for a lot longer than necessary. We made chopped vegetable salad—her side dish, my dinner.
I searched for the colorful Friday-night candlesticks I’d given to Lisa as an engagement gift. In a shop that specialized in Judaic gifts, I had selected a pair of short, colorful ceramic holders because we felt Lisa would prefer creative and simple. The motif was like a Chagall painting. I had also chosen a challah plate and a wineglass to match.
Sadly, it occurred to me that I had never seen these gifts in her home. I wondered if she’d ever unpacked them, or worse yet, if she’d given them away. I thought of the real silver candlesticks my mom had given me. They were on my table every Friday night.
Giving up on the idea that Lisa had kept my gift, I resorted to two scented Yankee Candle jars I stumbled on in a cabinet stocked with emergency flashlights and batteries. I placed the jars in the center of the table, lit the wicks, and chanted the short prayer I said at home every Friday night. Doing so with my granddaughter was glorious. She beamed at me, then asked, “Do we blow the candles out? You know—like on my birthday?”
“We’ll blow these out because they’re in jars, but usually, the Shabbat candles glow until gone.” I had much more to teach her—but I knew to cease explaining for now. I didn’t want to be too teachy—and risk losing her interest in any of it.
“What else about being Jewish?” she asked.
So, I told her about Lisa’s bat mitzvah , that when her mom was thirteen, she had chanted in Hebrew before the entire congregation. That she had made a speech. I was in the first row with Grandpa, so proud I could burst, I said.
After we ate, I scooped one dish of vanilla ice cream for dessert.
“Aren’t you going to have any?” she said.
“Not tonight. I’m watching my weight.”
She joked, “What’s your weight doing?”
Hopefully not going up, I thought. “I’ll have an apple.”
“It’s no fun to eat ice cream alone.” She grimaced.
I certainly wasn’t going to have a child beg me to eat ice cream. I put a scoop in another dish. What choice did I have?
Later, I ran a bubble bath, treated Callie to a head massage as I washed her hair, wrapped her in a thick towel, hugged her dry. She pulled on her new Walmart pajamas and climbed into bed. I scrunched in next to her. Nothing finer than the scent of a child—the world’s most beautiful fragrance. After we co-read two books, I said, “Who loves you best?”
“Did you say that to my mom when she was my age?”
“Nope. I made it up special for you. It’s what I thought the moment I saw you in your mother’s arms in the hospital on the day you were born. We were all waiting in the lobby for the big moment. Me, Grandpa, Uncle Alex, and Uncle Michael.”
“Where was Di?”
“She was in North Carolina then. It was far,” I said, making excuses for Di. I left out the part where Di waited weeks to come see the newborn. Then I wondered, had Lisa delayed Di’s visit on purpose? No, I thought. Di was just Di.
“Grandma, I wish you lived here. Then we could do this all the time.”
Between lighting the candles and what she had said, I was toast. Maybe Jake was right about relocating now rather than later. A friend of mine had moved to San Francisco to be near her son. But then her son was transferred to Seattle. My friend surrendered and returned to Florida. Lisa, however, owned her business. She was planted in the Berkshires, fortunate to be master of her own fate.
I heard myself say, “Grandpa would like to move here.”
“Mom told me. She said he could help her build the inn.”
“He would like that.”
“But what would you do?”
“Hmm. Maybe I’d help people who had pain in their feet.”
“But if you moved here, what would people in Florida do about their feet?”
“Oh, that’s not a problem. There are lots of other foot doctors in Florida.”
“Then it’s settled,” she said.
“‘Settled’ is a big word for a little girl.”
She smiled, feeling good about herself. Mission accomplished.
“Even if I lived nearby, I wouldn’t be here every night,” I said.
“Yes, you would. I’d tell Mom you had to be.”
I shut off the light. But the switch stayed on in my heart.
“Wait, wait. Say it again,” Callie said.
“Who loves you best.”
Due to Di’s book club, which was starting soon, I chose to stay upstairs. In Lisa’s room, I lingered by the window, examining the full moon, stars shimmering above a silent, peaceful countryside. I rested in the recliner, reflecting. If we remained in Florida for another ten years, Callie would be grown—driving, dating, looking forward to college, grown up, and gone in the fall. I congratulated myself on my math.
The phone sounded, and it was Jake.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“You go first.”
“I’m doing okay,” he said.
“Really okay, or fake okay?”
“Well, honestly, I’m looking forward to seeing Alex. He was delayed, but he’ll be here soon.”
I teased. “He was always your favorite.”
“I don’t have a favorite,” he said.
“Neither do I, but I like Lisa a drop more than the boys.”
“I’ll tell Alex that,” he kibitzed .
“It’s a joy to be here. I had an unforgettable evening. I’m sorry you missed it.”
“Next time, I’ll be there, Jodi. What did you do?”
“Simple stuff. I had dinner with Callie, dunked her in a bubble bath, said good night.”
“That’s perfect,” he said.
“Close to heaven.”
“But . . .”
After all these years, he knew when I was about to say “but.” I appreciated that.
“Jake, she’s eight, and she doesn’t know bubkes regarding our religion.”
“What are you talking about? We send her Chanukah gifts.”
“Lisa never discusses Judaism.”
“In that case, I want a refund from all those Jewish summer camps.”
“It upsets me, Jake. We have so much to teach her.”
“You mean about religion? Jodi, we can show Macallan our traditions, include her in what we do, but no matter how strongly we feel about our beliefs, her religion is up to her parents. It’s not our job.”
“It goes beyond religion. Right now, we’re just two old people on FaceTime. Bubbe in the box; zeyda , grandfather, on Zoom. Might as well be characters on a TV show. We’re as interactive as a call-in to CNN. We ask her questions. She volleys back. Then it’s over. I know we’re fortunate to live at a time when we can talk with her from a long distance, face to face in real time, but it’s not the same as being here. Di, who doesn’t give a hoot about being a grandma, and Annie, who’s a kid and unrelated to Callie, are the bubbes .”
“You’re jealous? That’s silly. You’re the grandest grandma of all.”
“Did you know you can buy a T-shirt in Walmart that says that?”
Throughout my life, no matter how busy I was, I had committed to family first. Maybe I needed to retire, come to the Berkshires, be with my daughter, and look after my grandchild. I thought of that adage, “No one on their deathbed has ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office.’”
“Jake, I don’t want to be one of those grandparents who makes an end-of-life decision to move near my daughter so she can unpack me into an assisted living that has a nursing home that I’ll eventually graduate to—where I won’t know a soul, and I’m forced to depend on her as my only visitor—and call her for everything until she begins to resent me.”
“My point,” he said. “But the picture you painted gets worse. Because we’d waited so long to move, we’d need a lot of help. Lisa becomes overwhelmed. She resents her brothers. She’s irate because they never help. She badgers the boys on the telephone. Finally, to keep Lisa off his back, Michael agrees to a visit, informs me he’s bringing along DeLorenzo with his agitating nephew and two large dogs I’ve nicknamed Yapper and Snapper, who are only happy when they bark. I tell Michael to stay where he is, explaining that we’d be overwhelmed by such a large-scale event. Lisa goes berserk for canceling the visit after she convinced Michael to show up. The upshot is Michael and Lisa are not talking.”
“And Michael resents Lisa,” I said.
“Because Michael is a telephone child. Telephone children call a few times a week with advice you don’t want, but only show up in person when you’re about to kick. They say things like, ‘Dad, you should try a cane. Dad, maybe it’s time to stop driving. Dad, you need a nurse’s aide to come to your home and help you.’ And I say, ‘What’s an aide going to do—sit here and look at me?’”
“You know what they call that whole scenario you painted?” I said.
“Pessimistic?” he said.
“Selling past the close.”
“So now you’re a real estate agent like Di.”
“I’m going to look at that house in Great Barrington,” I said.