Washing the Dead (33 page)

When I returned, Simone had paid the bill and she left a big tip. She stood up. “I need to see Marci. She lives near here.”

I opened my eyes wide. “Marci?”

“I want her to reread my cards.”

“Why?”

“I want her to tell me that I’m going to have more babies.” Simone took my hand. “She can confirm what I saw on your palm too.” She traced my heart line, pausing for a second where it split into two. Her touch was light but firm, like my mother’s. I wanted her to find some kind of reassurance from Marci, and I wanted to believe in her version of my heart line.

We walked out past the mariachi band to Simone’s car. I dozed off, feeling lighter from telling her my story and also vaguely aware that sometimes it was easiest to reveal a secret to a person who didn’t know you very well.

I woke up when Simone stopped the car.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”

I’d never been in this part of town, with street after street of
Spanish-style homes like the ones I’d seen in Old Town. I followed Simone up the driveway and around the back of one of the houses to a small cottage.

A woman with big eyes and curly light brown hair greeted us. “I’m Marci,” she said to me.

“The psychic,” I said. My mouth felt like I’d eaten one of the long cotton tubes my father stuck in his patients’ mouths to keep them from salivating while he braced their teeth. Marci and Simone disappeared behind a curtain, and I wondered if she read cards with a wizard cap on her head. The thought almost made me laugh, but then I burped up margarita and onions and carne asada.

“Oh, God. Where’s the bathroom?”

Marci appeared and guided me to her bathroom, and I sat on the floor with my head over the toilet bowl, breathing in the harsh scent of antiseptic cleaner and the fresh mint that Marci must have been growing in her garden. “I’ll give you some privacy, honey,” she said, and returned to Simone.

I could hear them arguing in the next room. “Simone. You’re putting too much weight on these cards.”

“So you’re not going to give me another read?” Simone sounded anxious.

“Relax, go away with Daniel alone. Eat good food and walk on the beach and
make love
,” Marci said.

I got it. Marci was Simone’s rebbetzin.

“How about my palm?”

“All right, Simone. I’ll take a quick peek, and you can come back for a full read soon.”

I didn’t hear anything for a few minutes, and then Simone said, “What is it?”

“Nothing, Simone.”

“No, you’re seeing something, I can tell.”

Marci paused. “This has nothing to do with a baby.”

“What is it?”

“Just be very careful. There’s danger in your midst.” Her tone
scared me.

A few minutes later, I felt a hand on my back. I looked up to see Marci, the light creating a halo around her gauzy lavender dress. Now she looked like the Happy Medium, another one of my favorite characters from
A Wrinkle in Time
. Yes, Simone had taken me to her cavern on Orion’s Belt.

“You okay?” she asked.

I shuddered involuntarily, and Marci massaged my back in circles. “Call me if you need me.” She handed me her card, which I stuffed into my pocket. Why would I need her?

“Let’s go,” Simone murmured, helping me up. She ushered me through the garden back to Daniel’s car.

I was sad that our outing had ended so abruptly and that Simone was having such a hard time having a baby.

I didn’t wake up until after ten the next morning. My head ached, and I felt like I was wearing cardigans on my teeth. I flung myself out of bed, worried that I might be sick again. I needed water. Fast. I brushed my teeth, gulping the water down and then regretting my haste as it floated back up my esophagus.

Daniel was sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper when I emerged from my room. I’d fallen asleep in the car, and I worried that I might have said something stupid in my half slumber.

“You’ll feel better soon,” he promised.

Ollie trailed Simone into the kitchen. “Are you sick?”

“I’m going to nurse you today. No Ollie duty.” Simone rubbed my shoulder. “Go back to bed.” I felt too ill to argue, and I returned to my bedroom, changed the sheets, drew the blinds, and slept until I heard a knock on the door. It was almost four o’clock.

“Barbara, your father is on the phone,” Simone said.

Since my last conversation with my mother, I’d had two brief, strained phone calls with my parents, both initiated by them. My mother and I chatted about the weather and little else, and after a few moments of this unbearable exchange, she put my dad on the
phone. My ear was permanently trained to pick up her mood. If she sounded happy, then she was likely still with the Shabbos goy. If she sounded sad, he’d left her again, which as much as I liked living with the Coxes, would have put me on the first plane back home to take care of her. My chest started to close as I picked up the phone on my night stand.

“Everything okay, Dad?” I could hear the panic in my voice.

“Can’t a father check in on his little girl?”

Had he found out that I got drunk and smoked pot? Maybe Sari saw me in Old Town and called Rabbi Schine. You never know.

“I’m doing great,” I said.

He sighed. “Those beatniks treating you okay?”

“Yes, they treat me like I’m part of the family, Dad.”

“Don’t forget your real family, Bunny.”

“Is Mom okay?”

“She’s just fine.”

I prattled on about my applications to San Diego State, UCLA, and, of course, Madison as a backup. I told my father how much I loved Ollie and how I could stay with Simone and Daniel while I went to school.

“Live in a dorm,” my father urged. “Have a normal college experience.”

His resistance made me dig in my heels. “What about my life has been normal lately?”

He wasn’t caving in. “You know I’ll support whatever decision you make, but I worry about this arrangement. I want you to get back on track with your life.”

My head still throbbed, and I didn’t have the energy for this conversation, but inside I knew that I was getting too involved in Simone and Daniel’s business. I wanted to wave a magic wand and give them a baby, and then I wanted them to keep me around and adore me for the rest of our lives.

“Don’t forget who you are,” my father said.

Since my mother’s affair, I’d had no idea who I was, I wanted
to say. Instead, I changed the subject by inquiring about their seder. When the conversation lagged, I told him that he was going to own the phone company, our family joke to end a call that went on too long.

“Dinner’s almost ready, Shel,” I heard my mother call.

I hadn’t heard her use his nickname in ages. Had she dumped the Shabbos goy and rekindled her feelings toward my father? After we hung up, I rolled over and went back to sleep.

18

S
imone got her period exactly a month after my seder with Daniel, and its arrival set us all on edge. She was subdued and only smiled at Ollie. She told me she was going to take Marci’s advice and get away for a few days with Daniel, and that I could take a vacation too because her parents had been dying to spend some time with Ollie. She also said she was going to start taking hormone drugs and that she might get a little “bitchy.”

On a sunny May morning, a few days before her body-temperature chart indicated that she’d start ovulating, Simone drove Ollie to Laguna. They’d spend a few days with her folks, and then she’d come home solo and take off for a week in Ensenada with Daniel. I wasn’t sure what I would do with myself, so before she left I’d asked her to make a list of spring-cleaning chores.

“You’re not the maid, Barbara,” she’d said. “Daniel will leave you his car. Go explore. Drive up the coast or something. This is a break for you. You deserve it.”

After she and Ollie left, I did two loads of laundry, sprayed Windex on sheets of newspaper to wipe Ollie’s fingerprints from the glass in the living-room windows, vacuumed the floors, and cleaned out the fridge. While scouring Simone and Daniel’s bathroom sink, I found a bottle of Simone’s nail polish, a soft purple that looked good on her. I sat on the edge of the tub and painted my toenails. Unskilled in such matters, I did a sloppy job, but the polish made my toes look long and sexy anyway.

I’d once heard that dogs act funny before earthquakes, as if
they can sense that something big is going to happen. I’d been feeling that way since my seder and my Old Town adventures with Simone. She and I hadn’t discussed the conversation we’d shared over margaritas. She’d been working extra shifts at the hospital, which made it easy to keep things light. Her moods were also unpredictable, so I tried to stay out of her way. With Daniel it was different. We’d started a conversation that I wanted to continue. Badly.

At noon, I changed into my bathing suit—well, actually Simone’s hand-me-down red bikini—laid a towel on a small patch of grass in back of the house, and began reading
My Name Is Asher Lev,
which I’d found in the living room. My mother and I had loved Chaim Potok’s
The Chosen
and
The Promise
, and now I was devouring his story about the little Orthodox Jewish boy who draws crucifixes and has a depressed mother everyone dotes on. I loved this little boy. I was this little boy.

I barely heard the back door open. Daniel stood over my towel, and I sat up, flustered, adjusting my bathing suit top.

“I didn’t know what you’d think of it,” Daniel said, glancing at the book.

I wasn’t sure how much Simone had told him about my life with the Schines. “I’d have been drawing crucifixes if I had any artistic talent.” I laughed and put the book down. “Can I finish it?”

“Absolutely. I want to hear your thoughts when you’re done.” He slid his Ray-Bans down his nose and touched my shoulder with his index finger. “You better get out of the sun. You’re looking pretty red.”

My skin felt crinkly. “Too late, this is going to hurt.” I patted the book. “It was worth it, though.” I stood and faced Daniel. I came up to his chin.

“Let me take you to dinner,” he said. “You know, to thank you for buffing out our house.”

I folded up my towel, my heart beating so loudly I wondered if Daniel could hear it. I showered and took extra care with my hair, now past my shoulders, the auburn blending with more new
strands of gold. I wore it loose instead of up in my usual ponytail, and when I turned my head, I could smell Flex shampoo.

I picked out the white jeans I’d worn the night I met Brian, a milk-chocolate scoop-neck shirt with white trim, and my brown sandals. My toes looked good. My cheeks were flushed from the sun, and I put a little Vaseline on my lips to make them shine. There was no harm in pretending that I was on a date.

Daniel was waiting for me in the living room. He’d changed his shirt, and he smelled like soap. Was this a date? That was ridiculous. He was just being charitable because I’d “buffed out” his house.

“Do you like Chinese food?” he asked.

“I had chop suey once at my friend Mira’s house, and I thought it tasted like bad cafeteria food.” I cringed at the thought of my high school cafeteria, a reminder of our age difference.

“Well, let me introduce you to some Chinese food that I guarantee tastes nothing like cafeteria food.”

He told me about a little place south of downtown La Jolla as we lwalked out to the driveway. He opened the car door for me, which no man other than my father had ever done. I tried not to look at him too much as we drove down the coast.

When we passed the street that led to La Jolla Shores, I glanced toward the ocean and remembered holding pale, scrawny Benny’s hand as we skipped through the sand toward the awesome Pacific. Now I chased after a sturdy sun-kissed Ollie in my red bikini, my midriff tanned and bare. I’d grown accustomed to the feel of the air on my body, and freckles had replaced the old acne on my back. Still, I would always associate Benny with my first dip into the ocean. I missed him.

“Smoke is coming out of your ears.” Daniel knocked his knuckles playfully on my leg.

I rubbed my fingers against the spot he’d touched. “I was just thinking about my first time in the water.”

He glanced over at me as he passed the turnoff for the La Jolla Cove.

“Simone might have mentioned that when she met me, I looked like I’d jumped out of a page of
My Name Is Asher Lev
.” I felt as though I’d just told him I was half Martian.

“Go on.”

“I grew up in a community like Asher’s. Lots of rules,” I said, and then my memories spilled out of me. “I liked knowing that every Saturday I was going to wake up and go to services. My best friend, Tzippy, would meet me in the women’s section—men and women don’t pray together—and when we were tiny, our moms would feed us saltines from the kitchen to keep us quiet.”

“What about when you got older?” he asked.

“Tzippy and I played out on the bluff and came back in time for the last prayer where her dad would throw his prayer shawl over our heads, and the air would smell like our hair and the milk on our breath as he talked to God on our behalf. When we got too old for that, we’d spend much of the service trying not to talk to each other or helping the young moms take care of their children. After shul, we’d eat a big lunch, and Tzippy and I would spend the afternoon together while the adults took their Shabbos naps.”