She feels a stab of fear. Moshe, successful Moshe, in trouble? Is it the wedding, or something else?
S
he finds the key precisely where she left it last year and fingers it self-consciously.
But no one’s home to see her open the door off the hallway, to hear the creak of hinges or smell the mustiness of a room unused for the better part of the year.
“Ta da,” she says to herself, opening the window.
Outside, there’s snow on the lawn; none of the hints of spring to which she’s opened her Pesach kitchen to in the past.
She’s weeks earlier than usual. She shivers in the cold air; tries to get a grip. She pulls on plastic gloves from a half-open box, gets a spray bottle and cleans the counters, the stove, finding that as she goes, she’s grieving herself. The woman who used to breeze in here mere days before Pesach with a clamoring to-do list; the energy of the chag itself all the motivation she needed.
At the end of last summer, that woman had handed in her resignation.
Now Pesach countertops are staring up at her before Purim.
She pulls open a cabinet: some plasticware, a closed packet of sugar.
There’s that fruit order that was delivered this morning. She’ll start with compote, the end of the meal. Did it really matter, when time has started to feel like water? You thought it was quenching, the sweetest thing; but when there’s too much of it, it feels like drowning.
She gets a tray of apples and wields her peeler just as the phone rings.
Moshe cell.
“Good morning, Ma, how are you doing? We’re sorting out the sheva brachos schedule, you said you’d do Tuesday, right?”
“Yes, I’d like the last one.”
“Great, Ma, thanks so much. Oops, gimme a min—”
He takes a waiting call and after a minute she’s clicked back on, and she hears him say, “Joe, the pressure is killing me, give me a few more days…”
“It’s me,” she squeaks.
“Ma… Oy…” he exhales. “Sorry that was—” deep sigh, “nothing.”
“What’s going on, Moshe?” but the call’s dropped.
She feels a stab of fear. Moshe, successful Moshe, in trouble? Is it the wedding, or something else?
