The Place Will Comfort You (13 page)

T
HE COUSIN OF A third cousin twice removed from the granddaughter of our paternal great-grandmother's niece's nephew's son. The doorbell chimes. American relatives set foot in Zion and they all expect to be put up. They bring us presents, so all right.

But look at this one. Is it the peephole warping her? The doorbell chimes again and no one asks who it is. We can see, the elevator hatch glowing behind her as she stands outside our new Pladelet.

Plada equals steel; delet, door. The marriage of the two delivered our Pladelet, registered trademark, just a week ago. Slogan: “Ma aht doh'eget? Yesh Pladelet!”—“What are you worried? Got Pladelet!” The door is a hit and deservedly so. This has been a vastly satisfying week of entrances and exits. Either way the sweep of the transition is majestic, heavy, slow. The closing is best. The door is sucked in with a passionate kiss, upon which the bolts pop out, and plug themselves in every side, floor, jambs and top. The owner's manual shows them in X-ray view, a blast-resistant grid. Since the Mavo Dirot attack sales have shot up. Had that mother been this secure, so would have been her kids. There are five of us children here, and twelve bars all told, all controlled by one key. The key has no teeth; it has pocks.

The peephole we hadn't thought much about. We've had those before; it seemed the same as any other. But is not. According to this view the individual outside is built by the example of a dollop of whipped cream, everything settling from a point. Doesn't the object closest to the lens 100m largest as a rule, the face? Perhaps the manual addresses this. We would go read up, except that our mother has ears in her head. She has heard the bell, several times. Someone must open. It's a question of who.

“I did last time.”

“He should.”

“She hasn't opened in a year!”

What's at stake here? We're not timid. But you never know the nature of these greetings, sudden intimacies with residents of unknown cities, strangers, as a rule better to do than us, but in terrible need, big-handed, broad-fingered. Children aren't asked, they're just enfolded.

The dilemma is resolved in a most shocking way. The cousin tries the door handle herself and reveals us where we stand.

“Well, hi! I thought I heard shy little voices. Oh my God.”

The peephole lied, it seems for our protection. Though stout, she's normally proportioned, but she is homely in the most offensive way. She has taken our face and mismanaged it.

Behold the family gums. In us they're a touch indiscreet, nothing disciplined smiling can't swathe. But in her! The top lip flares up like a skirt. We study our shoes and the stone chips and shells in the tiles. Some enjoy a funhouse mirror, we do not.

It is a face we trace, in foreign documents, to Vienna. Uncle Isser in Ramot retains a brittle invoice for our name, bought from the Emperor Joseph, no returns or refunds, the initiative the seller's, the purchase mandatory. Klein was what we could afford or we'd have taken Gross. Until then we had been in the eye of fewer folks. We had kept to two circles, first-name basis and Titled, the former limited to kin and community, the latter to outside bringers of good
or bad, Shayndl with the brilliant son or Gertrude the beggar, the Coalman and the Beast of Prey.

In our possession from an earlier passage are the pages of the Book of Numbers, providing the first-known mention of our first-known forerunner, Calev ben Yefuneh (chapter 13, verse 6), who would have glared upon his weak-kneed fellow scouts to Canaan through our own black-olive irises, beetling our heavy brows and flickering our sooty lashes in high spleen. The fiery red hair, we have surmised, was a Hungarian acquisition, later, from an ardent episode among the Hassids of Satmar. The beautiful Avreml may have passed to us, as well, the milky skin given to sunburn, the dancing crowds of golden freckles. We have been told that our good looks are dramatic. We've been told we stand out.

One hundred and twenty years ago, under fear of erasure, we steeled our expression and parted with the savage nobles of the European woods, seeking the new state of peace and self-dominion.

Here is where the split occurs: On the way to Palestine, certain features stop for a refresher on Ellis Island—and defect. They never rejoin us. Moreover, while in Palestine our complexion yellows with malaria and knots with battle scars, on Coney Island, in Newark, on the East Side, their face begins to alter in the low heat of the melting pot. Witness the cousin, with her double version of our chin.

“Lemme see,” she says, agog, as if we are the curious-looking ones.
“You
must be, no. You. I had it down pat on the plane.”

Again she displays the private regions of her teeth. The eyes, however, remain guarded.

The eyes.

HaShem above, what has she done to the family eyes? On us they are less than serenely wide-set; we have a naturally focused look. But hers are so little! This makes the face look so wide! A chimp would feel as we do upon encountering her first orangutan. It isn't nice to recognize the kinship in something so patently
strange. Oh, those eyes. How easily a look of hyperfocus shrinks to fear, and back again. Too many versions all at once, ours reflecting back at us, transparent, on the glass of her bifocals. What does she have to fear?

“You. No, you,” she says. “Uhh, wait. I was expecting girl girl boy, but what I'm seeing is girl boy boy—and boy, yeah, that is definitely it. In either case, the oldest's name I know is—Crud, crud, I give up. We've had a snapshot of you on our fridge since, well, forever. But you all pulled a fast one on me, am I right? You grew up and you're more. I need an update.”

They all say this: It's wonderful to know they always have a home here, and family. Our mother welcomes them. Her young ones aren't as receptive, are more dismayed by the disruption of routines, the blurring of turf, and that a guest always gets first dibs on the shower. The presents help warm us.

The first guest we remember was a father of another cousin, a child he brought with its mother, the wife. They would not eat our breakfast cereal. The brand name is Boker Tov, which is to say, Good Morning. The units are cylinders, irregularly cut, the color tan, the consistency sturdy. The stuff was too hard on the relatives'jaws and the flavor, they said, was like dust. They bought boxes of imported Frosted Flakes locally at an inflated price. Because of the price they asked that we reserve it for our cousin, Melanie.

They came with gifts! The packs of purple bubble gum lasted us two weeks. The elasticity! The perfume! And a formula that has overcome the bitterness at the end. The wads were reusable. Also they bore long manufactured cakes sealed in plastic, one for each: a perfect uniformity of crumb, an extravagant astringency of cocoa cunningly subverted with a layer of sweet white fat. The whole of it placing no demand at all upon the teeth—a science of contentment. This branch of thought is well developed here, we had all felt, until
then. The Devil Dogs dissolved against our palates, our worries bathed in chocolate awe. In appreciation of our uncle's contributions we took only a modest lien of the Frosted Flakes when the relatives were climbing to the Zealots' suicide fort of Masada in a cable car.

Tension ensued between the mothers. The American aunt, planted in our kitchen, wagged a depleted box of Frosted Flakes at our Imma. Why, said the American, why infringe? When yours are perfectly accustomed to the local stuff. It gratified us that our mother, who normally demands a stoicism on our part, a making do, in this case held her ground on our behalf. They could not hoard stock in our pantry and deny us. Our mother questioned us when they had gone, we hung our little heads. She said no more. She set her teatime sugar bowl beside our Boker Tov the next day's morning. Our hearts ached.

The uncle's family disliked our beds: span too narrow, mattresses too thin, no boxsprings? They moved to a five-star coastal hotel in Tel Aviv. Despite the strained relations they took us out to dinner at a touristy Chinese on the Marina—heavenly, everything deboned, the chairs tall-backed and soft, the music wordless. They let us look out at our sea through their tinted hotel panes and take in lungfuls of the frosted Sheraton air. A couple from a far-flung branch arrived only last month. They were no-tears shampoo and a jar of Fluff.

So what will this one be? For one, she's been at least an hour on our sofa sipping orange squash and chatting with our mother while her suitcase remains latched. We mixed the juice. We fetched a plate of lemon wafers, sat, attended to the adult talk without undue disruption. The sun descends. The tiles have left our bottoms numb. The older folks are bent on tracing family lines.

Often the datum doesn't jibe. Our mother will be under the
impression someone is long dead, or a convert. The cousin will correct her, no, alive and Jew, just hasn't kept in touch with the Israeli branch. The subject drops its anchor longest by one Cecil Kenneth Lyons, who now lives in Costa Rica with eleven pygmy hens. Our Imma finds the facts hard to digest. In Costa Rica? Operates an airtram through a cloud forest. The hens he considers his family, humble, he finds, hardworking and generous. The plumage remains downy through all stages of life, and both the males and females feed the chicks.

“Costa Rica?”

“Went with a birding tour, fell in love with the place.”

“Well.” Our mother holds the plate up once again. “We have birds, too. And you came here.”

The cousin accepts a pale wafer, tooths a crispy layer off and licks the inside filling. “Birds are nice,” she says, pursing her lips. “Is there a particular one? Cecil I remember was after the Resplendent Quetzal, originally.” She comments that the lemon creme is tarter than she is used to. “Oh God,” she says. “Can I just tell you real quick about my plans? I am on
such
a high. I have to see Masada, this I know, the Wailing Wall and David's Tower, Yad VaShem, Tiberias, the Dead Sea. All of those names! I can't believe they're going to come alive. You have to understand. Ever since I was a little girl in Sunday Hebrew school and Mrs. Milstein from the music period got me on this kick, all I could talk about was coming to see Eretz. Had to be her, sure wasn't my parents. She had just been, you see. She couldn't say enough. It was Eretz this and Eretz that and Eretz Eretz Eretz and, next thing that I know, here I am! Making it happen. Am I really? Someone pinch me.”

Imma blocks a pincering hand. Our middlemost is prone to acting out on how we feel. We're tired and annoyed and we don't like her manner of speech. The Hebrew studded in the cousin's English is limpened by her accent and misuse of the possessive form. We've noticed this in other relatives, the scant unintegrated stash of
Hebrew tossed in like exotic peppercorns in a bland stew. A grammar lesson: Eretz Yisrael equals
The Land of Israel.
Lop off Yisrael, and your remainder?
The Land of.
The lack of resolution makes us jumpy. Six times in one breath makes us upset. To ease our minds, we rest our gazes on the glossy maroon suitcase, a large and handsome piece of luggage of a sturdiness recalling our door's. The outside looks to have been poured of liquid leather, hardened in a loaf-shaped mold, quite a thick loaf, abundant. An inside view would show every sweet pleasure in her world and, most important, a year's supply of Frosted Flakes, box after box festooned with guardian tigers, her personal effects serving as padding.

“If you will it, it's no dream,” our eldest says.

“That's beautiful,” our cousin says. “Isn't that beautiful? And so true. Look, here I am. But let me not forget my hosts!” She straightens up and snaps out the retracting handle of her case. The loaf follows, rumbling on its wheels. “There is something I would like to offer you,” she says, as if we didn't know.

She rests her hand upon a silvery latch. She'll want to tip the suitcase over. We will want to help. We rise. She smiles and addresses us, more or less:

“Is this where I live now?” she says. We grant her the derisive look adults expect at purposefully idiotic quizzes. She puts on an equally broad aspect of bewilderment. “No?” she says. “Okay. You're saying that I'm not always hanging out on your couch?” We shake our heads in concert. “Really? Wow. Then what do I do? Where?” The youngest verbal sibling can take this one. “Great!” the cousin cries. “Okay. Let's get a little more specific. I live where in America?” Our eldest offers up what comes into her mind right after Disneyland. The Big Apple. “Great!” the cousin says. “Okay. Close. Actually Connecticut. South Meadowlark, proud home of Greater Hartford's first and largest Chuck E. Cheese.” Most of this we don't get. The playful tone is meant for us, we know, the heightened animation, the little eyes rapidly widening and relaxing as she bobs her
head, seeming to near us through the lower half of her bifocals, then to retreat above the seams. The esoteric wit is for our mother, who smiles drily as the visitor plays gentle puppeteer. Not that we mind. We're seasoned hosts. We recognize the prelude to a gift.

“So in conclusion,” she says. “Your Cousin Tiffy lives in—” Can't hope to pronounce it, won't attempt. She fills in the blank herself. “And there,” she says, “she spends her days camped out on people's couches. Yes?” Correct. “No! Silly Tiffy! Tiffy's ten years out of college. Tiffy holds down a job, a senior position, I might add, since not too long ago. The Lenzomat at Turnstone Mall, a pioneer in bringing one-stop, quarter-hour, exam-to-specs service to the Northeast. Not including frame selection time. I'm an optometrist!” she says. “Couldn't bring the mall, but I have my chief associate's kit.” She looks at us. We glance at each other. They don't usually expect thanks at this stage. First we must have a taste. “In other words,” she says, “consider yourselves my guests.” Strange, but fine. Take it out.

Her finger stirs on the latch. We hold our breaths.

“Thank you,” our Imma says. “No.”