Down the aisle Emily flung herself into a coughing fit, a grimacing Josh patting her on the back, and then Beverly’s smile gave way to a vision of his any-second-now-ex-wife. She had been hovering somewhere in the back of his mind and then pushed her way to the front, knocking Beverly over until she returned, timidly, to a dark space out of frame. Edie said nothing, she just stood there, her hands in fists, her presence enormous. Everyone in the temple sang, and so did Richard, and he looked at his grandchildren, and Josh was singing, and Emily had her arms crossed and was staring into space. An angry young girl. She looked at her grandfather, sneered, and turned back toward nothing in particular. Richard faced forward, folded his hands together, rested his forehead on them, and began to pray on behalf of his (if he had to be honest with himself now that he was in an actual conversation with God here) long-drawn-out-legal-battle-until-she’s-his-ex-wife. Because she was sick, she was very, very sick, in the head, in the heart, in the flesh, and even though he could not watch over her anymore, it never hurt to ask God for a little help. Here he was, in his house of worship, asking for help for her. Because now that he was really being honest, he’d give up Beverly in a second if he knew that it would heal Edie. But he knew that nothing would make her better. That’s what he knew that no one else did, not his daughter or his son or that little grimacing monkey two seats down. That Edie didn’t care if she lived or died.
Middlestein almost felt like he might cry, and where better to do it but here, under the watchful eye of God? He had seen so many people cry over the years in synagogue, in this long life of his, particularly during the Kaddish. He was born a few years after the Holocaust had ended, but it seemed like it dragged on for years, the wailing and the moaning, gradually fading to tender streams of tears accompanied by a choked-up sound, the sadness trapped in the heart and the chest and the throat, resolving, years after the fact, into just a whimper, for some faraway soul. (Could they even remember what their lost loved ones looked like anymore?) Then there was Vietnam. There was cancer. Heart attacks and strokes and car accidents. A surprising amount of cliff-diving accidents. (Six.) Suicides, hushed. Old age. Bankruptcy. Runaway children. Hands clenched across the heart, as if the white-hot force between the palms could make a miracle happen. If one believed in miracles. So many wars over the years, sons and daughters came and went. Pray for them, and pray for Israel while you’re at it, too. (Everyone always should be praying for Israel.) Hold on to hope. Hold on to love. Hold on to your family, because they won’t always be around.
Where better to cry?
But where worse to cry than under the watchful eye of the Cohns and the Grodsteins and the Weinmans and the Frankens? They didn’t need to know how bad it was. He didn’t want them talking about him later in their living rooms, over a nightcap of fat-free snacks. Worrying or judging, he didn’t know which, and it didn’t matter; either way would make him feel weak and helpless, and even after all these years of being in each other’s lives, what did they know anyway? They didn’t know anything about him.
Or to cry in front of Emily, who was now slumped on her brother’s shoulder, looking in profile a little dreamy, less like the Middlestein women and more like her mother, her petite chin, the smooth drop of her forehead, the pink swell of her lips, the furious blaze of her eyes temporarily dampened, as if she had pulled herself deep underwater, and was holding her breath until she turned blue. She must have felt him staring at her: she suddenly shook her head, and the eyes were relit. She had remembered she was supposed to be mad at him. No, he would not cry in front of Emily either.
After the services were over, he hustled the two children, his hands in an exceedingly firm grip on the backs of both of their necks, out the door, past the wall of gold leaves embossed with the names of donors—his was up near the top, because he was one of the first, although it had been a long time since he had given any sizable amount of money, what with this economy—all of them forming the long limbs of a tree, reaching up and outward as if they were holding up the synagogue. He didn’t stop to chitchat with anyone, just a nod and a “Good Shabbos, ” making a hapless, dog-eyed expression toward the children, as if to say, It’s not me, it’s them.
Outside, in the late-spring evening, the crack of summer heat curling at its edges, as they dodged the cars pulling up curbside to pick up the elderly, then mixed in with all those people filled with prayer and joy, the women in high heels, the men in their suit coats (no ties necessary during the warmer weather), the children running and giggling, released at last from sitting still, everyone immersed in that post-shul glow, he almost let himself forget that his grandchildren had engaged in such subversive behavior. He was, in fact, ready to forgive them, until Emily said, loudly, “I’m so glad that’s over.”
“It’s over when I tell you it’s over,” said Middlestein. “You’re lucky I don’t make you go back in there and have a talk with the rabbi himself about how God feels about texting during shul. He’d have a thing or two to say to you.”
“We didn’t want to come, you should know that,” said Emily.
“Shut up, Emily,” said Josh.
“You shut up,” said Emily.
“I think he knows that already,” said Josh.
Middlestein released his hands from their backs, which had started to sweat, and pulled out his keys from his suit-coat pocket, pressing the unlock-door button even though they were still at least a dozen rows from his car. He passed Josh, he passed Emily, he passed the Weinmans, headed, as they did every week, to a Shabbat dinner with Al’s elderly mother at her nursing home in Oak Park. He walked and walked through the streaming crowds until he was at his car, and he got in, and he sat, and he waited for those little sons of bitches to get there.