Chapter 24
At My Parents’ House
On the way to my parents’ house, Lily voiced her concern that my brother might recognize her – that maybe he had been at a conference at New-Hope Medical Center and seen her there by chance, or that…
I cut her off before she finished the sentence and reassured her that the chances were slim to none.
“So maybe he’ll notice that I’m sick…” She didn’t seem comforted.
“Lily, so what if Eli is a doctor? It’s not written across your forehead. You look healthy and radiant,” I insisted.
“But still – he’s a doctor. He’ll probably sense that something’s wrong with me,” she said anxiously.
“There’s no such thing, and he has no reason to suspect you’re sick.”
“You know what happens to me when I get nervous,” she pressed.
“So you’ll blush a little. No one will think twice. I know him.” Lily fell silent but still looked uneasy.
The introduction between Eli, his wife Joan, and Lily was brief.
Dinner went more smoothly than I expected.
Rachel, Eli, and Joan carried most of the conversation, occasionally including Lily and me.
But from the corner of my eye, I noticed my mother’s frustrated glances at Lily’s almost untouched plate.
I knew she would later have something to say about how “your girlfriend didn’t eat any of the special food I made just for her.
” But there was nothing I could do – Lily had to follow a strict diet, which she broke only on rare occasions.
The tension she felt about meeting my brother, the doctor, surely didn’t help her appetite.
“Your girlfriend is stunningly beautiful,” my brother told me the first chance we were alone.
“I know, so…”
“Why didn’t you tell me anything about her?”
“Because I usually don’t tell anyone about my girlfriends. Do you remember me ever telling you about anyone?” He hadn’t shared much about his own relationships either until marrying Joan.
“Even Rachel didn’t say a word – and you know she has no boundaries sometimes. Are you hiding her?” Eli asked suspiciously.
“Of course not,” I answered quickly, worried he might have noticed something unusual about Lily.
“Rachel told me she’s really talented.”
“Anyone who knows what they’re talking about says she has a bright future. She just got accepted straight into fourth year at Avni.” Before he could respond, I saw Lily and Joan walking toward us.
“I hear you’re studying art,” Eli said to her.
“Yes, at Avni.”
Seeing that their conversation flowed naturally, I relaxed a little and went to the kitchen to speak with my mother.
“She didn’t eat anything,” my mother pounced.
“Lily?” I asked with feigned innocence.
“Yes, Lily. What, my cooking doesn’t taste good to her?” She had plenty of practice in taking offense this way.
“We were just at her parents’ house, and she had a bite of something there,” I offered a flimsy excuse.
“Tell her that if she doesn’t eat here, she might as well not come.” My mother’s words were final.
“Mom, does everything always have to revolve around food?”
“Not everything, but most things … actually yes, everything. Remember: ‘If there’s no food, there’s no Torah.’”
I’d heard that line more times than I could count.
“Isn’t it enough that I eat?” I tried another angle. “I also didn’t see Joan gorging herself on your food, but you’re not complaining about her.”
“I’m used to Orit by now. But to start out this way – with your mother?”
My father stood silently washing the dishes.
He knew better than to argue; nothing he said could ever steer my mother off her course.
He gave me a smile of full understanding.
The truth was, he didn’t understand anything yet.
Only I knew that I was physically present at that dinner, while my soul wandered elsewhere.
I wanted to, but couldn’t bring myself to say out loud the plan I had already sketched in my imagination.
Nobody around that dinner table could have guessed what I was planning for the next day – November 22, 1975, exactly one week before the first night of Hanukkah.