Accidents of Marriage (19 page)

“Love isn’t an excuse for anything but treating someone well.”

CHAPTER 17

Emma

Emma and Zach walked along the secluded Riverway path, a stretch where the fenced-off trolley line and thick trees hid it from prying eyes. Not that many people were there at ten on a Thursday morning anyway.

Boston Latin, her high school, was closed for a teachers’ in-service day, despite it being only five days into the school year. Not that her father knew. Emma hadn’t mentioned it, and her father hadn’t bothered finding out.

Her mother marked everything on a giant UNICEF calendar hanging in the kitchen. Emma’s first day of high school was written in big purple letters—because purple and white were Boston Latin’s school colors, her mom said—followed by about a hundred exclamation marks. You had to take a test to get into Latin. Emma’s mother acted as though she’d won the Nobel Prize when she was accepted; the purple notation had been on the calendar for months:
Emma Starts Boston Latin!!!!

It sort of embarrassed Emma, especially since some kids started Boston Latin in seventh grade, so beginning in ninth didn’t seem like
such a huge accomplishment. Still, her mother’s pride had been nice at the time. Her father hadn’t even mentioned it when she went to her first day of high school.

Emma almost noted the day of her mother’s accident on the calendar, but she thought it would send Gracie into full prayer-meeting mode. The accident had been twenty-two days ago. Emma dreaded counting in months.

Autumn edged the air despite the summery warmth. Zach grabbed her hand and squeezed as they walked toward the echo tunnel.

“Want to go to my house?” Zach asked.

Emma shrugged, uncertain. “Let’s just walk around for a while.”

“Race you to the tunnel.” Zach’s hair blew back as he took off. Emma let him run, not even pretending to speed up. When she reached the entrance, Zach was already leaning against the tunnel wall. Thin to the point that his chest looked sort of caved-in, he was still handsome. His coppery skin didn’t have a single blemish. A tiny diamond stud glinted in his left ear—his big rebellion. Otherwise he was pure Jewish good boy from his starched oxford shirts to the chinos his father insisted he wear to school.

Zach pulled Emma close, reversing their positions so that she leaned against the tunnel. Rough cool concrete chafed Emma’s bare skin where her shirt rode up. He pressed into her as they kissed. He ran his hand over her hips and up under her shirt.

She pushed him away.

“What’s wrong?” Zach asked.

She leaned her head onto his thin chest. How could she explain that when his touch excited her, she didn’t know how to get back to ground? “It’s just. Just too much feeling.”

Zach wrapped her braid around his hand. “When I touch you, I can’t think of anything else I ever want to do.” He intertwined their fingers.

The hospital was just a few blocks away. “What do you do when you feel awful?” she asked. “So awful that there’s no place to put your mind?”

Zach was so still Emma wished she hadn’t asked. Was his life so
wonderful that he never felt awful? His parents who watched him so carefully, did they make his entire existence perfect?

“Sometimes I pray,” he said.

She squinted as they walked out of the dim tunnel. Did he mean pray like
Please, God, let me pass the physics test
? Get on your knees by your bed like in old movies?

“How?”

“Stuff I learned in Hebrew School. What my parents taught me. You know.”

“I don’t know.” Her religious ignorance could fill a Bible.
Ha ha.
“Tell me.”

They sat on a bench, facing the stagnant water of the unofficially well-named Muddy River. Thick reeds grew from the banks. Birds pecked around, searching for food. Zach put on his lecture face.

“According to my rabbi, ‘Even in hard times, we should seek to pursue happiness,’ ” he said and put a hand around her shoulders. “I think that means you should let me kiss you more.”

Emma shrugged him off. She wanted someone caring—not clutching at her. Was this what her father had warned her about in that ride home from when he’d found her in Copley Square?
They only want one thing at your age.
“Tell me about praying.”

“Prayer helps you get a good attitude and connects you to the world in the right way.”

“I don’t understand.” Emma felt her heart speed. “What does it mean? How does it make you feel better?”

“Maybe it’s not about making you feel better. My father says God judges us on how we behave—it’s not always about how others treat us, Emma.”

•  •  •

Emma picked up Caleb and Gracie from school, gave them bowls of Froot Loops, went up to her room, and shut the door. She stared at the computer screen: How could she find a temple? What words should she use? Was she a bad Jew to worry about herself more than she worried about others? Could being Jewish help her family?

Entering
Jewish
in the search bar brought up everything in the world, including a confusing menu of Jewish subtypes she’d heard of, but never before considered. Conservative. Reform. Hasidic. Orthodox. It took two hours just to learn
Reform
meant more liberal. That’s probably where her mother would tell her to go. In the liberal direction.

When she was twelve, Emma had asked to go to Hebrew School, just like her classmate, Gillian, who was preparing for her bat mitzvah. Emma had imagined it being like an Israeli Girl Scout.
The Diary of Anne Frank
had haunted her; after reading it, she’d gone online and read all the horrifying possibilities of being Jewish. Going to Hebrew School seemed a way to prevent being sent to a concentration camp and having to run around naked in front of laughing soldiers. Dying in an oven. Somehow she’d believed that Hebrew School taught you to fight like a Sabra.

Emma’s mother had said she’d look into it, but she never had. By the following year, Emma had moved on to wanting to go to dance class.

Googling led Emma down twisted roads; she found “Ms. Brisket cooking class” and the “Rock My Mensch Soul Band,” but nothing about finding a temple where she could pray. Finally, she found worship services listed at a temple in Cambridge, but had no idea how to proceed next. Did you just show up and walk in?

Emma extended her cramped arms and flung herself on the bed. What kind of an idiot couldn’t just figure out how to go to some stupid temple? She grabbed the stuffed sock monkey she kept on her pillow, stretched it over her feet, and pulled. Then she threw the monkey against the wall.

Her brother pushed open her door and walked in. “I’m hungry.”

“You just had cereal. Have some peanut butter. Leave me alone.”

“I’m
still
hungry. Peanut butter is all you ever say. I want something different.”

“Goody for you. Tell Daddy when he comes home.”

Caleb’s voice rose. “But I’m hungry now!”

Emma grabbed a stuffed zebra from the floor and threw it at
him. “Just shut up for one second,” she said, and turned back to her computer. “
Contact us,
” she read on the top of Temple Beth Tikvah’s screen.

Dear Rabbi,
Emma wrote.
I want to come to services at your temple. Is it okay to come alone? I am fourteen and just want to watch. How do I do this?

She sounded ten years old.

“A second’s over.” Caleb kicked the wall with each word.

How much worse could it get?

She clicked send.

•  •  •

“Do you want to come or not?” Emma screamed up to her brother the following Saturday morning. “We’re going to be late.”

“Don’t. Want. To. Go,” Caleb yelled down the stairs.

Gracie tugged at Emma’s sleeve. “Why don’t we just leave him with Kath?”

Emma shook her head. “Daddy will think I’m irresponsible, and anyway I don’t want him to know where we’re going.”

“Why not?” Gracie asked.

She wasn’t sure how to answer. Her father looked beaten when he placed folded dollar bills in Gracie’s
tsedakah
box each night. Somehow, Emma knew the knowledge of their going to temple would burden her father.

“Just don’t tell him. Trust me.” Emma looked up the stairs. “Caleb, get your behind here now or I’ll tell Daddy about the lamp.”

Caleb pounded down the stairs. Three nights before, he’d thrown a ceramic lamp against the wall because Emma wouldn’t change the TV channel. She’d told her father it had fallen when she vacuumed, but in the end taking the bullet for her brother didn’t matter. Her father barely seemed to care, which made everything worse. She’d rather he found out and screamed his head off.

Blistering sun seared their shoulders as they walked to the bus stop. A September heat wave suffocated the city.

“I’m thirsty,” Caleb whined.

“We’ll get soda when we get to Park Street.” Emma kept moving.

“Mommy wouldn’t like that. We can’t have soda in the morning.” Gracie held her thick hair off her neck. Emma should have told Gracie to put it in a ponytail. Why did her father have to work on a Saturday?

“But Mommy’s not here, is she?” Emma said. “So I say what we drink.”

“I don’t want soda. I want water.” Caleb’s voice quivered. “Mommy packs water before we leave.”

“We’ll get water at the Store 24 while we wait for the bus.”

“What if the bus is coming when we get there?” Gracie asked.

Emma grabbed her brother and sister by their shoulders, keeping them from walking. “You’re hurting me,” Caleb said as he tried to squirm away.

“Shut up, both of you. Maybe if you stop being spoiled brats and come with me to pray, Mommy will wake up, okay. Don’t you want that? You have to be good, or we can’t go. It’s up to you. Will you behave?”

They nodded, Gracie biting her bottom lip.

Emma grabbed Caleb’s hand. “Okay, c’mon.”

After walking silently for a few moments, Caleb tugged on Emma’s hand. “What?” She choked out the word through her closed throat.

“How do you pray?”

Emma walked faster, forcing them to keep up with her. “We just try to do what other people do. And if we can’t figure it out, we’ll just pray in our heads.”

Gracie skipped ahead to face Emma. “I know prayers from Grandma Frances. Should I use those?”

“As long as you don’t say them out loud.” All she needed was her sister chanting to Jesus as they sat in a synagogue. She led them across Centre Street to the bus stop in front of Goodwill.

“What do I say in my brain?” Caleb’s voice rose with each word.

Emma saw the bus coming. “I’ll teach you on the bus.” She reached into her pocket and touched the prayer she’d printed from the Internet:
You will serve G-d your Lord, and He will bless your bread and your water. I will banish sickness from among you.

•  •  •

They walked up the wide stone stairs and entered a cool vestibule. Three open copper doors revealed a large room beyond the entry.

Small clumps of people stood at an inner door, the men taking yarmulkes—small caps like Emma’s grandfather wore at Passover—from a basket. Women pinned lace squares to their hair, using bobby pins from a separate pile. Gracie tapped Emma’s arm.

“What?” Emma whispered.

Gracie motioned for Emma to come closer. “All the boys and men are putting them on,” she said softly in Emma’s ear. “Only some of the girls are. I don’t know why.” Leave it to her sister to crack the code in one minute.

The doors closed behind the last person. They stood alone in the air-conditioned vestibule. Emma’s sweat had dried to chilled stiffness.

“What do you think we should do?” Emma asked her sister.

Gracie took a black yarmulke from the basket and handed it to Caleb. “Put it on.”

He did, tipping his head as the slippery material slipped off. Emma fastened it with a bobby pin and then, imitating Gracie, pinned a lace kerchief on her own head.

The room beyond the doors surprised Emma. When she’d gone to church with Grandma Frances, everything had been wooden and dark. Purple, green, and red stained glass scenes filled with Jesus and Mary had blocked the sun. Here, the walls were bright white. The windows opened to the sun except for one cobalt and yellow stained glass window with golden Jewish stars. Twisted metal sculptures hung from the ceiling. Instead of an altar, a lectern covered with a velvet curtain sat on the stage.

Most men wore suits; the women, summer dresses or silky tops. Thin red books and thicker leather-bound blue ones fit in small holders in front of them.

Emma imitated the nearby people and took out a blue book. Caleb and Gracie copied her. Five people circled the lectern; a girl who looked about Emma’s age sat on a bench toward the back of the stage.

“Page one fifty-four,” said a woman onstage. “We will read from a
Psalm of David when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, who drove him away, and he departed.”

Emma riffled the soft thin pages, confused when she saw page one at the back until she remembered the Haggadahs Grandpa Jake passed out at Seders. Hebrew was on the right side of the book, English on the left.

The redheaded girl onstage walked to the podium, an ice-blue dress floating around her. She placed two hands on the lectern and began reading in Hebrew.

“Who’s that?” Caleb whispered.

“Shh.” Emma cut her eyes hard and mean.

“Why is a kid up there?” he persisted.

“I don’t know,” Emma hissed.

“What is she saying?”

An old woman turned around in front of them.

Emma got ready to be thrown out.

“That’s my great-grandniece,” the woman said. “She’s having her bat mitzvah.”

Perhaps Emma’s brother looked as ignorant as he was because she whispered a few more words. “Because she’s turning thirteen.” The woman’s thickly lipsticked mouth stretched into a broad red smile. She reached over and patted Caleb’s hand. “Thanks for coming.”

“Were we invited?” Caleb asked.

“You don’t have to be invited to a bat mitzvah service. Everyone’s welcome.” She looked at the three of them, her face friendly. “Come say hello at the kiddush. Have some cake.”