As Close to Us as Breathing: A Novel (4 page)

In three days, Vivie told Ada one evening, it would be Mort’s birthday. He would be twenty-four. She’d hoped to bake him a cake, to surprise him with it. They were to have a little party there at the store, Vivie, Mort, and the old man, Mr. Leibritsky.

“I had it all planned,” Vivie complained. She pulled her blankets over her face, despairing, and then pushed them down again, waist high. She was still flushed with fever and sweating. Ada urged her to drink more water, which she’d iced to help battle the fever.

Vivie sipped while Ada held the glass. Sated for the moment, Vivie dropped her head back onto her pillows. “It was going to be a yellow cake with chocolate frosting,” she said, her voice almost a whimper.

Ada nodded. Everyone loved a yellow cake with chocolate frosting. The choice was sensible enough, but maybe a little predictable, a little bland.

“Oh, Lord, Ada. Do you think this will ever end?” Vivie asked. Upon seeing her sister swipe her brow, Ada offered Vivie a hanky to mop up the moisture. Ada wasn’t sure if Vivie was speaking of her fever or of the courtship with Mort. “I think I need to sleep,” Vivie added, her voice falling. In the next minute she dropped off.

Ada brought Mort the cake. She baked it, on Vivie’s behalf, Risel encouraging Ada when she thought to make a chocolate cake with butter cream frosting rather than Vivie’s yellow cake. “Yes, yes. Bring him a
good
cake, at least,” Risel said. And
good,
Ada knew, was Risel’s best word for marvelous.

A
good
cake—the batter light, the frosting thick—is exactly what my mother brought him, on a platter, covered with wax paper. She donned her boots, coat, gloves, and scarf, and as she carried the cake to Leibritsky’s on Main Street, a mile-long walk, she trod carefully to avoid slipping on patches of winter ice.

“It’s for you,” she announced upon her arrival at the store, the tinkling bells as she walked through the doorway startling her. Mort stood before her, thin and not particularly tall, a dimple in his chin, waves of hair crossing his forehead, a warm smile marking his face. In his own way he was handsome, she thought, more so in the store than on those evenings in their home when she caught glimpses of him as she passed by the living room where he and Vivie sat. There he was stiff, in both posture and facial expression, but here he was so much more himself: smiling, self-assured, welcoming. She said, “Vivie couldn’t deliver it herself; she’s still so sick. But I know she wanted you to have this.”

“How is she?” he asked, taking the cake from Ada then pointing to a chair.

“Coming along.”

Mort insisted that Ada sit. “This is an awful lot of trouble,” he told her. He eyed the cake as he brought her a cup of coffee.

“It really
is,
” she answered.

When he widened his eyes in response, she laughed, a quick hoot.

She spun around to take in the store before seating herself in one of the leather armchairs that were more or less at the store’s center. She’d been there before, many times over the years, but never by herself. The place looked different, somehow, from the vantage point of her first journey there alone. More interesting. The green-rimmed dishes to her left were rather pretty, she thought. On a shelf across from them the men’s ties were as colorful as a rainbow. Just as always, there seemed to be no plan to the inventory at Leibritsky’s, but for the first time the disarray was less confusing than appealing.

“Can I interest you in anything?” Mort asked. A moment ago she’d heard him ask the same thing of a customer, an older man, who was now talking to Mort’s father.

“Cake?” she answered, smiling.

Soon they all had some: Ada, Mort, old man Leibritsky, and the customer. She amused them with talk of another cake she almost baked but didn’t. “Not quite
enough,
” she said of Vivie’s yellow cake. “But you have to understand. My sister’s sick with fever and not thinking at her best. When she comes back just tell her how you loved her cake, how the chocolate frosting was irresistible.” She lifted a forkful of the butter cream icing to her mouth and winked.

And that was the last Vivie was spoken of that afternoon.

“You’re a live one,” Mr. Leibritsky remarked with a laugh.

There was talk then of cakes: a favorite coconut cake that the customer, a man introduced as Thomas Tucelli, described with nearly obsessive detail. Mr. Leibritsky’s favorite was his mother’s babka, from the old country, baked with cinnamon, raisins, and nuts.

“Good God, child,” he told her, warming to her as he ate, and soon enough taking a second helping. “But do you know how good that cake is?” She wasn’t sure if he meant her cake or the babka of his youth. Still, she nodded. She began to feel an increasing comfort there at the center of the three men.

During this time Mort said little about cakes or anything else, but he never took his eyes off Ada. She knew it and liked it. Wriggling back into her coat, readying to leave, she realized that between the verbal attentions of the father and the nonverbal attentions of the son she’d had one of the most pleasant afternoons of her life.

Would she think of coming back soon? the elder Leibritsky asked as she stood in the doorway to leave. Mort was still staring at her, glancing over his father’s shoulder to do so. Even the customer Thomas Tucelli seemed to want her to return.

She directed her gaze at Mort and nodded. When she opened the door to leave, the tinkling of the bells caught her by surprise again.

“Did he like the cake?” Vivie asked. She struggled to rise from the bed. She sat on its edge, her bare feet dangling. Ada told Vivie they’d both liked the cake, Mort and his father.

“Mr. Leibritsky too?”

“Yes, Mr. Leibritsky too. He was very dear. Very animated.”

“Mr. Leibritsky? You sure?”

“Yes. The old man himself. He told me to come back soon.”

“He didn’t!”

“Sure he did. Why so surprised?”

“He never really talks to me, is all,” Vivie said.

“That’s because you’re too nice, Vivie. Too bland. He likes a little spit in his face. You’ve got to give it to him. That’s what wakes him up.”

“Lord, Ada. I’m sure you gave it to him. I’m sure you did.” Vivie shook her head. “So, tell me about Mort,” she continued. “What did
he
say?”

But before Ada could answer—a bunch of lies she’d practiced on the way home—Vivie had dropped back into sleep.

The next time Ada visited the store, three days later, she brought a jar of herring. Perhaps the men would want some with crackers for lunch, she figured. Upon her arrival, the old man threw his hands in the air. “What’s that? Babka?” he asked, smiling. His delight didn’t decrease when he saw she’d in fact brought fish.

Mort was with a customer, but when he finished, the three took to the seats at the store’s center as they had the last visit. The men enjoyed the herring and ate it, as she suggested, with crackers. When they’d finished, Mr. Leibritsky mentioned a new shipment of women’s shoes. “Special,” he said. “Ladies’ dress shoes. From
New York.
” He winked as he pronounced
New York
slowly, as if it were as exotic as Buenos Aires or Hong Kong.

They walked to a wall lined with shoe boxes. The pair Mort pulled out to show her, made of shiny black leather, had a bit of a heel and an ankle buckle. “Oh,” Ada whispered, surprised to see such quality.

“Try them,” Mr. Leibritsky urged. “Come on, what the hell.” He gave Mort a look, then shook his head. “Help the girl,” he finally directed.

A couple then entered the store. Mort rose but his father told him he’d handle them.

While Mr. Leibritsky shambled away, obviously tired, Ada returned to her chair and sighed. She felt a little tired too, or perhaps a little impatient. Mort remained standing as he pulled one of the shoes from the box, and then he knelt before Ada, shoe in hand. When she offered him her right foot, pointing her toe as she held the foot aloft in front of him, she noticed he was blushing. Her face, she had to admit, felt warm, was perhaps flushed as well. Suddenly she no longer felt tired or impatient. As he reached for her left foot she held her breath.

“Pretty,” Mort said once the shoe was on. He was staring at her foot, not at her, and still blushing.

She nodded, and soon he’d placed her right foot in the other shoe. She waited contentedly while Mort managed the ankle buckles on both shoes. As she rose from the chair Mort offered her his hand. She was glad to grab it and held on a moment past the point of rising. Her face once again felt warm. His was an even deeper shade of red.

When they glanced at each other she wondered if she looked as shocked as he did.

“Go for a spin,” Mr. Leibritsky called from across the floor. He pointed to the store’s entranceway, and as she walked she sensed the rapt attention of the two men on her, along with the customers’, an attention that made her feel even more important than she did at home, despite the recent elevation of her status there. In the next moment she grasped in a way that was more certain than ever before the meaning of her beauty, its power. As she moved forward she stopped blushing like a child, instead held her head high. She turned at the entranceway, tugged at her sweater and skirt, and then proceeded, proudly. Reaching Mort, she stopped, stood before him, turned in a quick circle, then dropped into the chair.

“That’s a good-looking shoe,” Mr. Leibritsky called. “A very nice shoe, hey, Mort?”

Mort nodded. She stared at him until she caught his eye, then she smiled.

She reached to unbuckle the shoes. In an instant Mort dropped to his knees, lifting a shoe from each foot, holding her ankles as he did. “There’s no way you’re going to get me to buy a pair of shoes,” she said. “Who’s got money these days? But that was sure fun.”

“That’s just it,” Mr. Leibritsky said as he neared them. He was looking at Mort when he added, his voice almost grave, “Everyone needs a little fun.”

“Did he say anything?” Vivie asked.

“Who?”

“What do you mean, who?
Mort.
Did he ask about me, Ada?”

“He asked. Sure he asked. ‘How’s Vivie,’ he said. ‘Is she well?’ ”

“And? What did you tell him?”

“I told him you were sick. I told him you were weak as a limp pickle.”

“But I’m walking now. I walked yesterday and today. I’m no limp pickle, Ada, please.”

“Vivie, you are. You’re not well. Now lie down and take a load off.” She fluffed her sister’s pillows and wiped her still sweating brow. “A limp pickle,” she added, “is exactly what you are.”

Just a week later, Vivie, by then well enough to amble about the house, caught them holding hands outside the front door. Mort had accompanied Ada home after another visit to the store. She’d nearly slipped on ice and he’d taken her arm, to steady her, and then held her hand. They’d walked that way, hand in hand, without talking, the last half mile. Just as Vivie opened the door to take in the mail, the lovers-to-be were standing, facing each other, hands still entwined.

“Oh!” said Vivie. She was wearing her bathrobe and slippers. Her hair was ready for nighttime, braided and down.

Ada stepped inside. Mort tried to speak but Vivie dismissed him with an unusually forceful “Go.” Then she slammed the door. In the front hallway, the two sisters faced each other. Ada began to unbutton her coat when her sister’s words, a rain of Yiddish, struck her.
“Vaksn zolstu vi a tsibele, mitn kop in dr’erd!”
You should grow like an onion, with your head in the ground!

I first heard these words some twenty-one years later, January of 1947, when Nina and I, aged fourteen and eleven respectively, were talking one late afternoon, a Friday, in the kitchen of my home. Nina had come over for a rare winter sleepover. We were helping my mother prepare the Shabbos dinner, and I was elated by Nina’s company.

My mother had asked me to chop an onion, and Nina another one, and the saying, just as we’d commenced peeling the onions, flew from Nina’s mouth.

“You should grow like an onion, with your head in the ground!”

She meant it only as light humor, and indeed, the oddness of the expression had me and Nina instantly laughing.

But my mother froze. A moment before she’d been crouched before the oven, checking the baking challah loaves. But hearing Nina’s words, she shot up.

For what seemed a whole minute she didn’t speak or move. During this time she might have been thinking, I knew, about us, her children, about whether we were bathed on schedule, or had finished our homework, or, the night before, had gone to bed on time, or, more generally, whether we were on the
right track,
as she often called it. Then again, she might have been thinking of my father, of whether she’d sufficiently cleaned and ironed his clothes, or had sent him off that morning with a decent enough breakfast and a happy enough wave, or whether she could muster the energy to sufficiently welcome him home that night. Tradition advises, my father once explained, that on Shabbos a husband make love to his wife, and this desire, too, was something to consider. In the totality of Friday she had to dust, sweep, and otherwise tidy the house; get us children washed; knead, braid, and bake the loaves of challah bread; set the table, prepare the meat, peel the potatoes, and rinse and chop the vegetables; wash herself, present the dinner, clear the table, put the food away, and wash the dishes. She had to do all this, and then she had to go upstairs to make ready for, as she once put it to me,
the you know what.
She didn’t think this custom was sanctioned by God, but rather was godforsaken, clearly man-made. So many Shabbos nights, trudging up the stairs to her bedroom, my mother was certain of it. There was all this—which on a yearly basis included the extra cleaning and cooking for the Jewish calendar, not only the weekly Shabbos meal but also the feasts for the New Year and Passover, and so many other holidays too, even minor festivals like Purim and Chanukah—and somewhere along the way this prize she’d felt propelled to rush toward and claim, marrying Mort Leibritsky and having his children, had become something to both love and hate. Confused, tired, my mother might have, in her pausing, been thinking about that.