The Truth About My Bat Mitzvah (9 page)

Feels Like Snow

The Saturday afternoon my family and I were going into the city to shop for Rachel's bat mitzvah, it finally got winter cold. All along the hour-or-so drive I watched the sky get grayer and grayer and waited to see the tips of the buildings rise into view. It almost looked like snow, even though it was only the beginning of November.

“Well, I remember once it snowed on Thanksgiving,” my mother said, looking out the window at the Hudson River on our right.

“Oh, sure,” my dad added. “And remember when it snowed in May?” He kept his eyes forward, on the road. I had to sit in back next to Sam, who had fallen asleep almost immediately after we got in the car. Now he was snoring.

Why do grown-ups like talking about the weather?

“I don't feel so good, Mom,” Sammy was saying. He had woken up, and I had to admit, he didn't look so good.

“We're almost there, sweetheart,” my mother said. “You're
probably just carsick. Do you want Daddy to pull over?”

“Amy, don't tell him that. I can't just pull over on the West Side Highway,” my dad said. His voice had that high-pitched, annoyed tone.

“He'll be fine,” my mom told us all, including Sam.

I wasn't so sure.

It took us thirty minutes to find parking, which ended up being in an expensive hourly rate garage when we couldn't find a spot. My parents were another minute from full-fledged bickering, but once we got out of the car, things felt better. Except that Sammy was still complaining. To get even more attention, he was walking kind of bent over and holding his stomach.

We were going to take a subway downtown and then work our way back up to the department stores. First my dad wanted to go to the Barneys warehouse on West 17th Street.

“So you're Mr. Fancypants all of a sudden?” my mother joked. “Barneys?” She made herself talk with a funny accent. They both laughed and walked toward the subway stop holding hands, but we never made it that far.

“I'm really sick, Mommy,” Sammy said. He had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and had his head down.

I think it was the “Mommy” that did it.

My dad had to pick Sam up in his arms, while my mother put her hand on Sammy's forehead. She looked into his eyes while we all turned around and headed back toward the garage. And at some point during that parent powwow I heard the word “hospital.”

Now my mother was in the backseat with Sammy. Asking him questions like Where does it hurt? and Does it hurt when I press here? Or here?

“New York Hospital,” my mother directed. “On the East Side.”

“I know where it is,” my dad snapped.

I was getting scared. We got stuck in traffic and then we got lost. And then we found it. And then my mom and Sammy and I were in the emergency room and my dad was parking the car all over again.

“Is Sammy going to be all right?” I asked my mom.

“Yes, honey. But I think he might have appendicitis.”

She was holding Sammy on her lap. The waiting room was bright, sectioned off with Plexiglas and furnished with green molded plastic seats. It was filled with people.

My mother had already pulled rank. We were next. The nurse stepped into the room, reading from a clipboard.

“Samuel Hoffman Weeks.” She called Sammy's name just as my dad showed up. His hair was messy and he was sweating. He looked worried.

Sammy was sleeping again, with his head on my mother's lap.

Everything else happened pretty fast after that. A nurse took blood while Sammy screamed. The doctors talked to my parents. Then they took Sam into a room while my dad and I waited again in the waiting room. They had old TV sets bracketed onto the walls, all of them playing a different channel, but I didn't feel like moving.

For a long while I became completely engrossed in watching
Full House
in Spanish. I was surprised at how much I could understand, but maybe that was because I had seen that episode before.

“They need to get him to surgery,” my mom said when she came out.

Sammy wasn't with her.

You Couldn't Pay Me Enough

“I am not going to her house,” I said.

It was late. I was hungry. We had never gotten to eat. I was tired. And I was scared. My brother was going to have surgery. My parents didn't know how long it would take. They would be here overnight. And I couldn't stay.

“I've already called her,” my mother was saying. “She's coming over in a cab to get you. And then you will spend the night at her house. I will call you in the morning. There is nothing I can do about it.”

I still didn't understand. “Why can't I go to Nana and Poppy's? Why can't I?” But I knew she had already explained this. My grandfather wasn't home. He was down in Florida looking at condos.

“No,” I was saying. “I'll stay here. I'll sleep on the chair. I'll stay up. Please. Please. Can't I stay at Rachel's? Can't you call her mom?”

Now I was begging.

“Caroline. I can't ask Sandi or Jay to drive all the way into the city now. Besides, it would take hours,” my mother told me.

“I'll go to a hotel.” I was crying. “Please, Daddy. Please.”

My father hugged me. “Caroline, you're being a little over-dramatic. I know you're scared but Sam will be fine. We can't leave right now. It's important. Do you understand? We need you to do this for us. It's just one night.”

How can you argue with that?

I nodded my head, and when my mother stepped toward us, I buried my head against her.

“It's okay, sweetie. I would know if it wasn't, right? It's okay. I'll owe you one for this, kiddo. For staying with New Aunt Gert. I'll owe you.”

She'd better believe it.

Calèche

Being in New York City at night without my grandparents made me really sad. It was the darkness, the streetlights, the occasional clarity of voices, and the lonely sound of sirens in the distance. All the noises that used to remind me of visiting my nana, staying in her bedroom, breathing in her perfume, squished into the dip between two mattresses. And I missed her more than ever.

“Well, this is it,” Aunt Gert told me.

Before we even got out of the cab a man in uniform, a blue uniform with gold tassels on the shoulders, came hurrying out of the apartment building to open the door for us.

“Mrs. Schwartz.” He said it as a statement, like she might have forgotten who she was.

“Clyde. This is my grandniece, Caroline Weeks.”

“Pleasure.” The man tipped his hat to me.

Good God almighty.

The wind was much stronger here. I could tell by the way the cab door felt, braced against it. The wind seemed to race right up the block. When we stepped onto the street I could feel the cold right through my coat. My hair whipped around, wrapped around my face, and stayed there. Even when I tried to pull it from my eyes, another section of my hair took its place.

“I always wear a hat here,” Aunt Gert said. “Riverside is the windiest part of the city.”

“I don't mind,” I said, but I was glad when we got inside. The walls were lined with mirrors, mirrors and marble. I made it a point not to look at myself as we walked to the elevators.

My new aunt Gert lived on the very top floor.

She
was
wearing a hat; I didn't even notice it till we got in the elevator. It had a feather on one side, and she was tall. Pretty tall for an old lady. Then my stomach growled really loudly just before the doors opened.

“I will get you something to eat,” she said. “Right away.”

I was embarrassed and grateful.

 

You could tell as soon as you walked into the apartment that never a child alive had stepped into this place. Well, maybe that was an exaggeration, but certainly no kid ever resided here. It was a museum. Untouchable. I watched as my aunt seemed to avoid stepping on her own rugs. They were tremendous, with intricate foreign-looking designs. Any piece of furniture that dared to stand on the rug had coasters under its feet.

Most everything was wood, dark wood. Shiny like it had just been cleaned an hour ago. There was even a stillness in the air, like nothing ever moved around in here. Or wasn't supposed to.
It didn't look anything like my grandparents' apartment.

The windows were draped in thick dark curtains ceiling to floor, and the places where the curtains were slightly parted, I could see another, lighter set of curtains behind them. I didn't know where to go.

“Let's go into the kitchen,” Aunt Gert said. She was hanging up her coat in a hall closet and reaching out her hand to take mine.

“Thanks. I think I'll keep it,” I said.

“Very well.” She headed into another room, expecting me to follow. The kitchen, it wasn't anything like my nana's. This one was big, but the counters were mostly empty, and for some reason she had two refrigerators.

“How about some cottage cheese?” she asked me, opening one of them. “With a little cantaloupe. Oh, I don't have any. A sandwich?”

“Thanks,” I answered.

She was awkward in the kitchen, with the bread and the slices of turkey. I wanted to offer to do it myself but I wasn't sure if that was ruder than just sitting here watching. When in doubt I usually choose to stick to what I was doing, which right now was nothing.

“Mayonnaise?”

“Yes, thank you.”

Then there was the even more awkward moment when I realized I was the only one eating and that she would probably sit here and watch me. I was relieved when she put my plate down in front of me and said she was going into the spare room to see to my bedding.

But first she asked me, “Would you like something to drink?”

“Milk?” I thought that was a safe bet. Grown-ups usually like
kids who drink milk. Besides, the younger I appeared, the less would be expected of me.

“I can't give you milk with your turkey sandwich. How about some juice? Orange?”

“That's fine. Thanks.”

She poured the juice, left the room, and I was left sitting once again, wondering. Was this milk thing something like not traveling on Saturdays? A part of me knew it was. A part of me knew it was something Jewish. Not going to school on Yom Kippur. Lighting candles on Hanukkah, which we hadn't done in so long, the memory of it sat in my brain along with Barney the purple dinosaur,
Blue's Clues
, and circle time. Nana could have told me, I thought. Had I only asked.

I felt a shiver run through my whole body. I was tired and I was hungry.

I bit into my sandwich and finished my whole meal in about a minute. Juice and all. I was starving. Aunt Gert was still not back yet. My chair squeaked loudly across the floor as I pushed it from the table and got up.

Aunt Gert's living room, the one with the thick, dark drapes, is the biggest room, I figured, although I still hadn't seen the bedrooms down the hall. I needed to use a bathroom. There was a little door by the front hall. That must be it.

There was also a long, skinny wooden table against the far wall that seemed to have no other purpose than to sit huge ornate frames upon.

Yes, this was the bathroom. The kind nobody ever uses, with little shell-shaped soaps in a shell-shaped dish and plush hand towels with ribbon and an embroidered emblem right in the center that makes it hard to dry your hands with.

On my way out, I took a look at the photographs on the long table. I saw one that I was sure was my grandmother and grandfather, Nana and Poppy, but they were very young. The photo was black and white. It was a wedding photo.

It was so quiet in here, I could hear the ticking of the clock in the kitchen.

Why would she have this picture? I thought she hated my grandmother. I thought she was so opposed to the marriage, she never talked to her own brother again, until his wife died, my nana.

And is that how my nana and Poppy felt about my own father? I felt tears burning behind my eyes. Being in New York, being here at night, I missed my grandmother. I knew it couldn't be true.

And then suddenly I felt someone was behind me.

How had my aunt Gert sneaked up on me like that? So quietly I hadn't heard her walking down the hall? I spun around, but no one was there.

I looked back at the photos. This one must be my grandfather when he was young; I could just barely recognize him without his little rectangle moustache, but it was him. He was wearing a suit, his hands in his pockets, standing next to a tall young woman. Attractive but not pretty. She was wearing a huge, funny hat. She had her arms around him. It was his sister, it was my new aunt Gert before she got horribly ugly and mean. Or maybe she was mean then, too.

They looked like they loved each other. There was even a little photo, a color one in the back, in a more modern-looking frame. It was my family, a long time ago. Me and Sam and my mom and dad. I barely remembered when we took it. On vacation in
Florida visiting my dad's mom just before she died. I was about six years old. Sam was a newborn. How did she get this?

Just then the phone rang down the hall. I heard Aunt Gert's muffled voice. I hoped it was my parents calling to tell me everything was all right. Sam was fine and they were coming to get me and we'd all go home.

“Caroline?”

I stepped toward the hall. “Yeah?”

“Can you pick up the phone in the kitchen? Your mother wants to speak with you.”

“Okay.”

I nearly banged into the wall as I turned and headed back toward the kitchen. I had turned out the light after putting my dish and glass in the sink. I tried to scan the dark room with my eyes wide as could be, looking for the phone as I felt around the wall for the light switch.

My hand moved up and down as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Edges of the counter, the stove, the refrigerator became clearer.
I think that's the phone over by that calendar.
I didn't want to wait to turn on the light. As I made my way through the shadows and across the floor, I felt something brush by me. I felt something warm, something beside me, and I stopped when I smelled something familiar, like perfume.

Nana?

“Caroline?” my aunt called out again. “Can you find the phone?”

As quickly as it had come, the perfume was gone. I picked up the phone and spoke with my parents.

 

Sammy had his operation. He was fine. He was in recovery but my parents didn't want to leave the hospital. They would stay there all
night. They had a little chair-bed set up in Sammy's room.

No, no. I was fine. Don't worry. Of course, I'd see them in the morning.

I love you, too. Both of you.

I will.

Bye.