She parks and lets herself in.

“Hey, Mom.”

She comes into the living room and sees that Mom’s putting a picture into a frame.

It’s just a copy and the frame’s cheap wood. But it’s art.

“Is this another picture from Rorie?”

Her mom’s friend back from her art days had starting sending her prints. People could send all manner of things if you tugged at their heartstrings enough. Mom must’ve pulled the I’m so sick, please send me gifts card on her.

“It’s Monet’s Woman with a Parasol,” Mom says, and her voice changes, an awe in it. This, Aviva can do — talk art with Mom.

She sits down on the sofa, looks at the picture. “I love the greens, the light everywhere.”

“I think this is my favorite impressionist painting,” Mom says wistfully. “It’s just a casual family outing, not a formal portrait, he’s showing his wife and son briefly interrupted on their stroll.”

“They’re just catching a moment,” Aviva says.

Mom’s face lights up. “You got it, it’s a fleeting moment, not traditional posed art.” They share a smile of the meeting of minds. For a moment, she’s not a cantankerous, unwell woman anymore. Art is one of the only things that still allows her to float off into another world. Or maybe that’s her real world, Aviva thinks, and that’s why she finds the regular world so hard.

“The woman’s expression—” Aviva starts to say.

“She’s a mother walking with her child.” Something comes over Mom’s face.

Aviva looks at the dominant mother figure, the child in the distance, feels something clench inside.

“You see the parasol the woman’s holding?” Mom continues. “I think it’s a metaphor for us, for the role of the woman in society. Shielding, yet elegant.”

Is that how she sees herself? Her imagination… it’s a step away from fantasy. As Mom talks, Aviva closes her eyes for a moment. Outside the wind picks up and she hears the rain striking the panes. When Aviva and Yakov were young Mom used to tell them long stories each night, weaving wonderful, wacky tales.

“Is it a real story?” she asked Mom once.

“Maybe,” Mom said. “Anything can be real if it’s alive in your imagination.”

On the sofa near Mom, 20 years later, amid the rhythm of rain, Aviva shivers.

When she hears the key turn and Yakov come in, she has an urge to leave him and just go home.

But it’s a dinner night with Mom — she’d already told Racheli — and when their visits overlap, which isn’t often, Yakov usually orders takeout.

This time, though, her brother is empty-handed.

“Traffic on the way from Lakewood. I didn’t want to be late.”

That would get Mom mad. They didn’t visit as often as she wanted, so when they did come, she expected timeliness.

“I’ll order something,” he says, waving his phone.

“I want to go out,” Mom says, surprising both of them.

“Out?”

“Yes, out to eat.” Defiance creeps into her voice. “I’m feeling okay now that I’m off the treatment. And we haven’t gone out in ages.”

“Sure,” Yakov says uncertainly, then exchanges a quick look with Aviva. Both of them say sure again.

Aviva slides into her jacket, and goes to get Mom’s.

Behind her, she hears Mom call Yakov over. “See this Monet? Remember we saw it at the National Gallery in DC? You must’ve been twelve, Aviva was ten.”

“I remember something, Mom… huge rooms, fancy frames, paintings worth millions….”

“I gave you kids a good time, didn’t I? And on my own.” She looks directly at Aviva.

Aviva swallows. To think she sees herself as that woman with the parasol.

“Yeah,” she says, because what else could you say to a woman who’s facing her own mortality?

They go to Crêperie, an old favorite.

The café is mostly empty before the dinner rush. It’s just them and three occupied tables. She considers how they appear, lovely family meeting for dinner. Appearances….

Aviva’s tired. She lets Yakov do the talking. Good old Yakov, her dependable older brother who’d somehow managed to hold his own — and hold Mom at bay. It had helped that he’d been away a lot — years of yeshivah in Israel, then Lakewood since his marriage. But he’s still Mom’s golden boy.

“How are you feeling, Mom?”

“Good enough to get out. “

“That’s why we’re here.” There’s patience, even a smile in his voice when he says it. He could placate her, become the adult in the room. Aviva couldn’t do that without falling apart inside.

“If I’m feeling good now, I’ll take what I can.”

“Sure, Mom, what would you like to order?”

Mom gets a soup, which she pronounces “not flavorful enough,” but she finishes it down to the last drop.

Yakov has a salad, and Aviva, a stir-fry.

“You know what I need when I go out to eat,” Mom says. “Something I can’t make myself.”

You haven’t made anything yourself for ages, Aviva wants to point out.

“Something decadent, chocolaty, luxuriously soft.”

“Mom,” Aviva groans, but she laughs. If anything redeems Mom it’s her inner poet.

Yakov hands Mom the dessert menu. She peruses it and says, “I’ll take the chocolate crème brûlée with caramelized pecans.”

The waiter brings it along, a custard dome, brush of chocolate, hard sugar crust.

“Definitely not something you could make at home,” Yakov says.

“Have some,” Mom says magnanimously.

Aviva takes a spoonful, but feels a hard knot of nausea within. Maybe it’s the mix of flavors, the chocolate mingling with the savory flavors she just had. She watches Mom eat the dessert and something tickles her consciousness. Her mind takes her back to another dinner, another evening out with her mom and brother. Mom’s 30th.

They’d sat on high stools, her feet swinging; her first time in a real restaurant. She must have been what, eight? Mom had gotten them some luscious dessert, her birthday cake, she’d said. She remembers rich chocolate, sickeningly sweet — and then Mom telling them not to eat it all, to act as though they were coming back. “Restroom break,” she’d whispered, whisking them out of their seats and to the bathrooms, then past them, out the door… quick as a blink…

Aviva feels sick.

She puts down her fork, her head swimming, the custard cloyingly sweet. Breathe, Aviva, breathe.

She looks up and the room comes into slow focus. Yakov eating. Mom’s face, her eyes closed. She must have drifted off. Sometimes Aviva forgets how weak she is, how a trip around the corner could knock her out.

She turns away from the food, motions to Yakov.

“What?” he says.

She beckons him away from the table, to a small alcove nearby.

Pressed against the wall, she bursts out, “Dine and dash.”

“What?”

She’s talking in a harsh whisper because she doesn’t want to wake Mom. “That’s what it’s called, what Mom did, on her 30th birthday. Remember she took us out to eat? The dinner, the chocolate mousse cake…. Then she made us sneak out without paying.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t remember that at all,” Yakov says.

Goosebumps form on Aviva’s arms.

He steals a look at Mom, then shakes his head firmly. Then he adds, more quietly, “Aviva, you know it’s no use wallowing in the past. You have to keep looking forward. ”

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 910)