I watch his back as he heads into my childhood home. The front door is open, and I see the darkened hallway leading to the kitchen. There is a patch of faint light. Shmuel is standing on it, and then he is gone, up the stairs, and I can’t see him anymore.

I close my eyes and think if I had any tears, now would be a great time to release them. Nothing happens.

“Crying in the car?” Rivky says, leaning over Shmuel’s still-open window.

I feel my chest tightening. This is why I don’t like him smoking. This is one of the many reasons I don’t like him smoking.

“It’s a new low even for you.” She opens the car door and sits in the driver’s seat. “So, we are here.” Her teeth dig into her lip. “I just never thought… we never thought it would happen, it feels wrong.”

“It is wrong,” I tell her. “It’s a mistake.”

Rivky looks at me, decides I am insane, and then looks through me. “Yeah, you’re still the dramatic one,” Rivky says harshly.

“And you’re still the younger one,” I say.

We sit in uncomfortable silence for a few seconds before Rivky gives up. “So are you coming in?” She gestures with her head toward the house. “Mommy is waiting for you.”

She slides out of the car, comes around, and takes my hand.

“I am going to schlep you now if you don’t walk,”  she whispers. I don’t walk, and she makes it all the way to the door dragging me behind her.

“Your wig?” She raises an eyebrow.

“I don’t care how my wig looks,” I say.

But she does care, so she combs out the bangs with her fingers before shepherding me all the way into the dining room. She passes the threshold between me and reality. I think I should wake up. I think this is the point where a dream turns into a nightmare and cements itself so nothing else can exist simultaneously, and this is when you wake and scream.

What happens when you realize you can’t wake up?

I am in the kitchen and Shmuel is handing me a charred egg and bread that Leah, Asher’s wife, has prepared for everyone. He has a coffee in the other hand, and he promises to make me one after I eat the egg and bread, so I wolf it down. It threatens to come back up in a storm of sobs and bile, but I keep it down, and Shmuel rewards me with a steaming coffee.

I hang my face in the cup, inhale the rich scent.

He asks if I saw Mommy, Babi, and Zeidy yet, and I tell him no. He leaves to go find them because he is a good son-in-law. I take my coffee and leave the kitchen to the sticky outdoors, which is still better than the sadness that drains the colors of the walls inside.

I dig my fingers into the porch railing and trace where he would stand with me and stargaze. Where he quizzed me on my Chumash when it was nice outside, and where he helped me catch my first-ever butterfly and showed me how to release it.

I smell her before I see her behind me. Dad’s older sister has had the same cherry blossom smell for as long as I’ve known her. She places a hand on the small of my back. “Hi, my sweetheart,” she says. “It feels much better once you cry.”

I see mascara slithering over Auntie Gracie’s cheekbones and settle on the curve under her nose. I feel envious. “You got to get it out,” she says.

“I can’t.”

She looks away, her tight-fitting dress imprisoning her down till her ankles. She smacks her dark red lips. They make a noise that lands somewhere between a kiss and a scream.

“Your dad was — your dad, he is — was—” She falters. “You’re the English teacher, you should know the correct tense.”

“I’m not an English teacher anymore,” I say.

“You loved teaching, why did you stop?”

“I didn’t, I’m a mechaneches now.”

“A what?” she asks.

“I was promoted,” I say.

Auntie Gracie whistles. “That’s my girl.”

I should tell her it doesn’t matter. I should tell her that it doesn’t matter that I can help all the kids in ninth and tenth grade when I can’t stop my Miri from getting expelled, when I can’t say a single thing right to her and she hates me.

I say nothing.

“You get paid more?” she asks.

I snort.

Auntie Gracie laughs. “Will you come in with me? I don’t want to see my mom yet. Or your mom for that matter. I really don’t want to go in at all.”

I don’t either. I have never felt more like my aunt. I have also never felt more alone.

Auntie Gracie holds my hand. “Wait, do we think my mom will be mad about my dress?” This is the aunt I know, afraid of Babi and Zeidy’s judgment.

“Babi will probably wish you wore something else,” I tell her.

“Well, my brother is dead, so there.” She grimaces.

It takes me a whole minute, but Auntie Gracie leads me back to the dining room — the same spot I’d fled.  She’s holding my coffee while I hold myself together. I sit, finally, in one of the low blue chairs, flanked by Mommy and Rivky. And that’s when I realize that her brother, the one she kept talking about, is my father.  And suddenly, I can’t breathe.

FRIDAY

All the people here seem to be filled with so many emotions they don’t know where to place them all. So they drop them on the coffee table, old folding chairs, and Mommy’s lap.

A girl I knew in high school is here. I don’t remember her name, but I remember her face. She’s talking to Rivky and holding a porcelain bowl; her free hand is gesturing like an animated pigeon.

“Rivky, did you eat yet? You must be so hungry. I bought a salad from that amazing salad place, I forgot the name, but it’s delicious, can I prepare a plate for you?” She speaks so loudly I can hear her even when I am away, disappeared in a place in my mind where everything is all right.

She passes by me when she goes to the kitchen; she clearly knows our house. She’s probably been here for study parties and sleepovers. She looks straight at me. “Henny, you look like you’re fainting, is no one feeding you guys?”

She brings back three bowls filled with salad. “Leah is finding dressing,” she says, handing Mommy, Rivky, and me a plate.

Rivky eats as though she hasn’t seen food in days.

“You need to take care of yourself right now. Make sure you eat and drink.” She says it like she knows something none of us do.

I wish Rina would come and sneak me out of here. I met Rina when we moved. She came over on our first Shabbos with cream cheese-frosted carrot muffins and never really left. If she were here, she’d say, “Do you remember when we were over for Shabbos? It was so beautiful. Your father sang so nicely. He had a really good voice.”

And I’d tell her that he has a good voice. I should know; I was an English teacher.

Shmuel said I can take a quick shower before Shabbos. He even brought my face cream and anti-aging serum, but the two showers in the house are both occupied. He also brought the kids. Bracha and Dovi are running around with their cousins, and my amazing, talented eldest daughter who, surprisingly, didn’t burn the soup, won’t talk to me.

“She’s just scared you will say something about the school thing,” Shmuel says.

The school thing is Miri getting suspended for two weeks, and I wish he’d do anything — even smoke — instead of calling it a mere thing.

“Of course, I’m going to say something about the suspension.”

“Just think about how much better it can be if we let her work out her own issues,” Shmuel suggests. “She can learn independence, consequences, responsibility. That’s all really important for a sixteen-year-old.”

“It’s not an issue like when she lost my earrings, the blue ones with the studs, which I never found, by the way.”

“I like the earrings you have now,” he says.

“Thank you, but not the point,” I snap.

“What is?”

“I want to talk to Miri. I want her to talk to me.”

“I know.”

She told Shmuel first; she told him, and then he told her to tell me.

“And I really, really want my own bed.”

“I know.”

I had asked him to bring my EarPods, a throw, my pregnancy pillow, and my bed. Apparently, beds don’t fit into trunks.

“I got a dress for the bar mitzvah.” Rivky, Mommy, and I have convened, completely unplanned and annoyingly so, in the kitchen. We are all ready for Shabbos. Physically at least.

“I went to so many stores, but I couldn’t find anything that was exactly the right shade of blue to match our color scheme and the guys’ suits. Can you believe Akiva is turning thirteen? Time flies.”

“Wait, so did you find a dress in the end?” Mommy seems invested in the story.

“Yeah, so I was saying, I went to nine different stores. Do you hear me? Nine! One of them had a really gorgeous dress with sequins. It was pricey, but I was going to take it anyway. Thing is, it was a bit darker than the blue I’m using for the flowers and tablecloths. So I went and found the softest blue fabric that’s an exact match of blue, and I’m making a dress. Absolutely to die for.”

“I’m so happy you’re doing that,” Mommy says, while I roll my eyes so far back I think they might get stuck.

“What?” Rivky asks exasperated.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“But you did that thing you do with your eyes — if you have something to say, just say it.”

“It’s not important.”

Rivky’s eyes grow cold and gray. “No, please go ahead. Say it. Whatever you think, just say it.”

“You were just sounding very superficial, that’s all. Nine stores, and so many hours wasted, and this and that, and oh, my goodness, it wasn’t the exact same shade of blue. One would think you suffered greatly.”

“You think I’m superficial?” she asks. “Who do you think you are to decide that I’m superficial?”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.” I put my hand up.

“You shouldn’t have,” Mommy tells me. “I’m going to set up the licht. Please be nice to each other while I’m gone.”

Rivky waits for Mommy to leave and then she pounces. “Maybe I’m not superficial. Maybe I’m just a thirty-five-year-old woman who has one child, one boy, and this is the only one I have. I’m not going to make another bar mitzvah next year. I’m not going to make a kiddush or an upsheren or a bas mitzvah. So yeah, I care deeply about this bar mitzvah, and I make a huge deal of the suits matching the dress and the dress matching the flowers and the flowers matching the tables.”

She takes a second to catch her breath, and I hope she will stop yelling. She doesn’t.

“Or maybe I am superficial. Maybe I care too much about the little, tiny things that make no difference in the overall scheme of things. It’s not like Akiva knows the difference between an orchid and a magnolia. Nobody does. So what if I’m superficial? Let me have this, okay?”

My younger sister is crying. Part of me is stabbed by guilt. If I were anything like my father, I’d run over and hug her and tell her that it’s all right, and Hashem has a plan that’s not dependent on how many bar mitzvahs she makes or how many children she has, and she should buy the nicest, puffiest navy blue gown if that makes her happy.

I am not my father.

I leave Rivky crying in the kitchen. I suppose crying is good for one’s soul. Just not for mine.

Miri is sitting on the couch reading a book. The couch is still pushed against the wall to leave space for the folding chairs, so I see her, but she doesn’t see me.

I love that girl. Every motherly ounce of me loves her.

Yet I always mess up. I never know what to say. I do too much or too little, ask too many questions or never the right ones.

This is the one girl impossible for me to reach.

“All ready for Shabbos?” I ask.

She looks up, turns around. Her eyes meet mine and then she drops my gaze. “I’m busy.”

“I see. Is the book good?”

“You don’t want to talk about the book,” she says.

She is so right.

“Maybe I do.” I go to sit next to her on the couch facing the wall. She slides to the other side.

“Sweetie.” I can’t get the words out before she snaps the book shut.

“You want me to say I’m sorry. But I’m not.”

My mouth feels dry; I hold back so many choice comebacks. “Why would you tell me that?”

“You like honesty, right?” she asks.

I look at her. I try to see something, anything. All I can see is defiance.

“I am being honest. I am not sorry,” she says.

“You should be. You need to take responsibility over your actions and when you don’t, you act like a child…”

I regret it after I say it. Like every other conversation we have. Like every time I try to do and say the right thing to her.

“I am tzinding soon,” I tell her. Instead of Can we start over? Can you not say that you are not sorry, can we both be respectful of each other for one moment and start again?

SHABBOS

I don’t want to talk about the meal,” I tell Shmuel as the ceiling fan turns round and round above my head. The room reminds me of the nights my father would sit at the foot of my bed until after midnight.

“Nightmares?” he would ask. I was ten then. Twelve. “Are you scared?” And he would stay until I wasn’t.

“It’s weird,” Shmuel says. Like he knows what I’m thinking. “I can smell him.”

The ceiling fan casts shadows on the ceiling and wall.

“I mean the whole house. It’s drenched in him. And he’s nowhere.”

The fan does another lap.

“I don’t want to talk about that either,” I say.

Shmuel nods. “I’m going downstairs to get water, you want something?”

“A sweater. Thank you.”

The room is getting colder, and the fan is spinning faster, and I try to steady my breathing. I think about him on the edge of my bed and hear his voice in my head: “Are you having nightmares?” and I tell him, “Yeah. Right now. I’m having a nightmare, and I am wide awake.” There is no response. And then Shmuel returns, and he hands me a sweater, and I smell it before I feel it and I know it’s Tatty’s.

It’s not morning, yet there’s a lime-colored light inching into the room when I wake. I slip out wrapped in a sweater that’s too big. The second to last step creaks and I think there’s an intruder because there’s movement in the dark kitchen.

“Black or with milk?” Leah is sitting at the kitchen island. She stands up when she sees me, wiping her face, like she was crying. “There’s cake on the counter, it’s defrosting. I’ll make you a coffee. You like it with sugar and milk, right?”

“Go to sleep, Leah.”

She shrugs. “Babi’s house was so quiet and hot. Her steam is set at seventy-seven.  Can I get you some frozen cake?”

“No.” The clock is glaring 5:27 a.m. in neon yellow.

She wraps her hands around her cup. “You look good.” She takes in Tatty’s sweater wrapped twice around me.

“I do?” I look at my reflection in the microwave screen. There are red marks under my eyes. “I look sick,” I inform her.

“I’m making you a coffee.”

I sit beside her. We don’t have much in common; she’s a therapist, and I’m in denial. We live an hour away and see each other on Purim and Chanukah. The funny thing is that I am harshest with people I’m closest to, and it’s easier to get along with her because she is not one of those people.

“You don’t have to be the one taking care of everything,” I say. “You lost him, too.” I realize the “too” suggests someone lost him before she did. I realize it, and I breathe through the acrid taste that fills my mouth.

“Denial is normal,” Leah says.

“I’m not your client,” I say.

She laughs. “So, coffee…”

Zeidy is sitting on Tatty’s chair, and I try not to claw my eyes at the sight of it. I don’t look at Miri either because talking to her will result in her yelling and me crying or the other way around. I don’t tell her to put her book away; I don’t tell her to sit straight. I stare stoically at a white spot on the white wall that looks exactly like all the other white spots on the white wall and try to convince myself that this is like every other Shabbos.

“Cholent, anybody?” Leah asks, but no one is listening. Rivky is talking to Yitzy, and her husband responds with enthusiasm. I hope they are not talking about her gown again. The boys are arm wrestling, and the girls are running around. Miri is reading, taking small breaks to nod at something Auntie Gracie is saying. She even manages a smile.

Mommy is nodding at what Babi is saying, and Zeidy has his head bent over a sefer.

He finally looks up. “Whoever says a devar Torah gets ices,” he says.

It takes a minute, but that gets the boys’ attention, and they hurry to bring over their parshah sheets.

I want to ask him to stop. I want to shake us both awake so everything is normal again, and Tatty is back.

Asher coughs. “Can we not?”

“Asher,” Mommy warns.

“It’s so nice to eat all together,” Mommy says, trying to steer the conversation someplace we can all stand without drowning.

“Are we, though?” Asher responds. “All together?”

“Yes.” She smiles. “Do you know how long it’s been?”

“Are we all together?” he asks again. “Because Tatty’s not here.”

“Asher,” Leah gasps.

Mommy looks like all the wind has been knocked out of her.

He shrugs. “What? The whole reason we’re here is because he isn’t. So, this Shabbos is obviously not with everyone.”

Zeidy coughs. “No father should see his son die,” he finally says. “My son would have wanted a devar Torah. So, Dovi, let me see your parshah sheet. What did you learn this week?”

Asher stalks off to the kitchen, Leah’s face is set between a grimace and grin, and she asks in a louder voice than before, “Does anyone want cholent?”

No one answers.

Reenie bursts into the dining room. “Mommy, I want lizard already.”

“You mean dessert, sweetie. After the cholent.”

“But Mommy—” Reenie begs.

“After cholent,” Leah repeats. “I’ll go bring in the cholent.” Leah takes the opportunity to escape the tension. She makes it all the way to the hallway before she screams.

“Asher, who left the door open?” She hurries back into the dining room, face ashen.

“What’s wrong?” he asks from the kitchen.

“There’s a cat,” she stutters. “An ugly cat in the hallway.”

“A cat?” Dovi shouts. “That’s awesome. Can we keep it, Mommy, please can we keep it, please, Mommy?”

“No, we are not keeping it,” I tell him.

“I want to see the cat.” Auntie Gracie makes her way from the table to the hallway. We hear her cooing to the cat. Rivky rolls her eyes, then screeches when Gracie brings the cat into the dining room.

“Get it out of the house, Chana,” Babi says.

Gracie grips the cat. “Don’t call me Chana. I don’t like it.”

“Don’t say that,” Zeidy says.

Auntie Gracie’s face hardens. “You didn’t change at all. I thought this would be different.  But here you are, calling me Chana again and telling me what to do. I—” There are tears in the corners of her eyes. She leaves with the cat. The door slams behind her.

“Henny,” Rivky starts. “Go after her.”

“Why me?” I ask.

“Because she likes you. And why in Heaven’s name are you wearing Tatty’s sweater? You’re such a baby.”

“I’m a baby? You’re the one going insane about a bar mitzvah. I am not a baby. I was in denial. Well ,not anymore. Now I’m grieving, thanks to you and Leah and—”

“Stop fighting, everyone, stop fighting and sit down.” Mommy’s voice slices through the room.

I feel bad for Shmuel, sitting in a stiff armchair, watching this wonderful family moment. What did he say last night? The seudah was so nice. Is this nice, Shmuel? Do you like any part of this? Would you like to get your son a cat while we’re at it?

Mommy continues, her voice barely above a whisper, yet it feels like she is bellowing. “This is my house, you are my guests, my husband was just niftar. So I am going to ask you one time, and one time only. Can you please stop fighting?” Her voice cracks.

Rivky opens her mouth to respond, Mommy stops her.

“It was a rhetorical question, Rivky. Go help Leah with the cholent. Henny, go find your aunt, leave the cat outside, and bring her back.”

I feel like this is a big moment. The moment we crack open. The moment we wake up.

I think that this is it. We are all wide awake and the nightmare is forever.

When Zeidy makes Havdalah hours later, Dovi raises the Havdalah candle while his cousin runs to turn off the light.

I stand next to Shmuel, and he’s next to Asher. Rivky is holding Mommy’s hand, and Miri is leaning so close she’s almost touching me. Then she notices it and moves across the room without ever meeting my eyes. What am I doing wrong?

Zeidy’s voice is ethereal as he whispers goodbye to Shabbos. It is so much like Tatty’s voice.

All I want is for Tatty to hold my hand while I figure out how to live with the loss of him, but he is not here. I let tears leak from my eyes in the darkness. I suppose crying is good for one’s soul.

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 952)