Just One Day

Twenty-five
APRIL
Miami Beach
Mom and Dad are waiting for me at my gate in the Miami airport, Mom having arranged for their flight to get in a half hour before mine. I’d hoped I might have gotten out of this year’s Passover Seder. I just saw Mom and Dad for spring break a few weeks ago, and coming down for Seder means taking a day off from school. But no such luck. Tradition is tradition, and Passover is the one time of year we go to Grandma’s.
I love Grandma, and even if the Seders are always mind-numbingly dull and you take your life in your own hands eating so much of Grandma’s home cooking, that’s not why I dread them.
Grandma makes Mom crazy, which means that whenever we’re visiting, Mom makes us crazy. When Grandma visits us at home, it’s dealable. Mom can get away, go vent to Susan, play tennis, organize the calendar, go to the mall to buy me a new wardrobe I don’t need. But when we’re at Grandma’s old-people condo in Miami Beach, it’s like being trapped on a geriatric island.
Mom starts in on me at the baggage claim, sniping at me for not sending thank-you notes out for my birthday presents, which means she must have asked Grandma and Susan if they’d gotten theirs. Because other than Jenn and Kali—who baked me a cake—and Dee—who took me out to his favorite food truck in Boston for dinner—and Mom and Dad, of course, there was no one else to send thank-you cards to this year. Melanie didn’t send anything. She just posted a greeting on my Facebook page.
Once we get into a cab (the second one, Mom having rejected the first one because the AC was too weak—no one is safe from Mom when she’s on a Grandma trajectory)—she starts in on me about my summer plans.
Back in February, when she first brought this up, asking what I was going to do over the summer, I told her I had no idea. Then, a few weeks later, at the end of spring break, she announced that she had made some inquiries on my behalf and used some connections and now had two promising offers. One is working in a lab at one of the pharmaceutical companies near Philadelphia. The other is working in one of Dad’s doctor friend’s offices, a proctologist named Dr. Baumgartner (Melanie used to call him Dr. Bum-Gardner). Neither job would be paid, she explained, but she and Dad had discussed it and decided they’d counter the loss with a generous allowance. She looked so pleased with herself. Both jobs would look excellent on my résumé, would go a long way toward offsetting what she referred to as the “debacle” of my first term.
I’d been so irritated, I’d almost told her that I couldn’t take those internships because I wasn’t qualified; I wasn’t pre-med. Just to spite her. Just to see the look on her face. But then I’d gotten scared. I was getting an A in Shakespeare Out Loud. An A minus in Mandarin, which was a first for me. A solid B in my biology class and labs, and an A in ceramics. I realized I was actually proud of how well I was doing in my classes and I didn’t want Mom’s inevitable and perennial disappointment to poison that. But that was going to happen no matter what, though I was sticking to my plan A—to show her my final grades when I made the announcement.
But finals are still three weeks away, and Mom is breathing down my neck right now about these jobs. So as we pull into Grandma’s high-rise, I tell her that I’m still mulling it over and then I skip out of the cab to help Dad with the bags.
It’s so strange. Mom is the most formidable person I know, but when Grandma opens the door, Mom seems to shrink, as if Grandma is some ogre instead of a five-foot bottle blonde in a yellow tracksuit and a KISS THE MESHUGGENEH COOK apron. Grandma grabs me in a fierce hug that smells of Shalimar and chicken fat. “Ally! Let me look at you! You’re doing something different with your hair! I saw the pictures on Facebook.”
“You’re on Facebook?” Mom asks.
“Ally and I are friends, aren’t we?” She winks at me.
I see Mom wince. I’m not sure if it’s because Grandma and I are FB friends or because Grandma insists on shortening my name.
We step inside. Grandma’s boyfriend, Phil, is asleep on the big floral couch. A basketball game blares from the giant television.
Grandma touches my hair. It’s to my shoulders now. I haven’t cut it since last summer. “It was shorter before,” I say. “It’s sort of in between.”
“It’s better than it was. That bob was awful!” Mom says.
“It was a bob, Mom. Not a Mohawk.”
“I know what it was. But it made you look like a boy.”
I turn to Grandma. “Was she traumatized by a bad haircut in her youth? Because she seems unwilling to let this go.”
Grandma claps her hands. “Oh, Ally, you might be right. When she was ten, she saw Rosemary’s Baby and begged me to take her to the children’s beauty parlor. She kept making the lady go shorter until it was all off, and as we were leaving the salon, another mother pointed Ellie out to her son and said, ‘Why don’t you get a haircut like that nice little boy?’” She looks at Mom, smiling. “I didn’t realize that still upset you, Ellie.”
“It doesn’t upset me, because it never happened, Mother. I never saw Rosemary’s Baby. And if I had, at ten, that would’ve been entirely inappropriate, by the way.”
“I can show you the pictures!”
“That won’t be necessary.”
Grandma eyes Mom’s hair. “You might think of trying that pixie again now. I think you’ve been wearing the same style since Bill Clinton was president.” Grandma gives another wicked grin.
Mom seems to shrink another inch as she touches her hair—straight, brown, in a low ponytail. Grandma leaves her like that, pulling me into the kitchen. “You want some cookies? I have some macaroons.”
“Macaroons are not cookies, Grandma. They’re coconut cookie substitutes. And they’re disgusting.” Grandma doesn’t keep anything in the house with flour during Passover.
“Let’s see what else I have.” I follow Grandma into the kitchen. She pours me some of her diet lemonade. “Your mom is having such a hard time,” Grandma says. When Mom’s out of sight, she’s sympathetic, almost defending her, like I was the one who riled her up.
“I don’t see why. She has a charmed life.”
“Funny, that’s what she says about you whenever she thinks you’re being ungrateful.” Grandma opens the oven door to check on something. “She’s having a hard time adjusting, with you being gone. You’re all she’s got.”
I feel a pit in my stomach. Another way I’ve let Mom down.
Grandma puts out a plate of those gross jelly candies I can never resist. “I told her she should have another child, give her something to do with herself.”
I spit out my lemonade. “She’s forty-seven.”
“She could adopt.” Grandma waves her hand. “One of those Chinese orphans. Lucy Rosenbaum got a cute one as a granddaughter.”
“They’re not dogs, Grandma!”
“I know that. Still, she could get an older one. It’s a real mitzvah then.”
“Did you tell Mom that?”
“Of course I did.”
Grandma always brings up things the rest of us don’t. Like she lights a memorial candle on the anniversary of when Mom had her miscarriage all those years ago. This, too, drives Mom crazy.
“She needs to do something if she’s not going back to work.” She glances out toward the living room. I know Mom and Grandma fight about Mom not working. Once, Grandma sent a clipping from a news magazine about how badly the ex-wives of doctors fared financially in the event of divorce. They didn’t speak for months after that.
Mom comes into the kitchen. She glances at the jelly candy. “Mother, can you feed her some real food, please?”
“Oh, cool your jets. She can feed herself. She’s nineteen now.” She winks at me, then turns to Mom. “Why don’t you take some cold cuts out?”
Mom pokes in Grandma’s refrigerator. “Where’s the brisket? It’s almost two now. We should put it in soon.”
“Oh, it’s already cooking,” Grandma says.
“What time did you put in?”
“Don’t you worry. I got a nice recipe from the paper.”
“How long has it been in?” Mom peeks in the oven. “It’s not that big. It shouldn’t take longer than three hours. And you have to cover it in foil. Also you have the heat way up. Brisket’s meant to slow-cook. We’re starting the Seder at five? When did it go in?”
“Never you mind.”
“It’ll be like leather.”
“Do I tell you how to cook in your kitchen?”
“Yes. All the time. But I don’t listen. And we’ve dodged many a case of food poisoning because of it.”
“Enough of your smart mouth.”
“I think I’ll go change,” I announce. But neither one is paying attention to me anymore.
I go into the spare room and find Dad hiding in there, looking wistfully at a golf shirt. “What are the chances I can escape for a round?”
“You’d have to throw down some plagues at the Pharaoh first.” I look out the window to the silver-blue strip of sea.
He puts the golf shirt back in the suitcase. How quickly we all give in to her. This Seder means nothing to him. Dad’s not even Jewish, though he celebrates all the holidays with Mom. Grandma was supposedly furious when Mom got engaged to him, though after Grandpa died, she took up with Phil, who’s not Jewish, either.
“I was just kidding,” I say, even though I wasn’t. “Why don’t you just go?”
Dad shakes his head. “Your mom needs backup.”
I scoff, as if Mom needs anything from anyone.
Dad changes the subject. “We saw Melanie last weekend.”
“Oh, really?”
“Her band had a gig in Philadelphia, so she made a rare appearance.”
She’s in a band now? So she can become Mel 4.0—and I’m supposed to stay reliably me? I smile tightly at my dad, pretending like I know this.
“Frank, I can’t find my Seder plate,” Grandma calls. “I had it out for a polish.”
“Just visualize the last place you had it,” Dad says. Then he gives me a little shrug and heads off to help. After the Seder plate is located, he helps Grandma get down serving bowls, and then I hear Mom tell him to keep Phil company, so he sits and watches the basketball with napping Phil. So much for golf. I go out onto the balcony and listen to the competing sounds of Mom and Grandma’s bickering and the game on the TV. My life feels so small it itches, like a too-tight wool sweater.
“I’m going for a walk,” I announce, even though there’s no one on the balcony but me. I put on my shoes and slip out the door and walk down to the beach. I take off my shoes and run up and down the shore. The rhythmic beat of my feet on the wet sand seems to churn something out of me, pushing it through the sweat on my sticky skin. After a while, I stop and sit down and look out over the water. On the other side is Europe. Somewhere over there is him. And somewhere over there, a different version of me.
_ _ _
When I get back, Mom tells me to shower and set the table. At five, we sit down, settling in for a long night of reenacting the Jews’ escape from slavery in ancient Egypt, which is supposed to be an act of liberation, but somehow with Mom and Grandma glowering at each other, it always winds up feeling just like more oppression. At least the adults can get drunk. You have to down, like, four glasses of wine during the night. I, of course, get grape juice, in my own crystal carafe. At least I usually do. This time when I go to drink my first sip of juice after the first blessing, I almost choke. It’s wine. I think it’s a mistake, except Grandma catches my eye and winks.
The Seder carries on as usual. Mom, who, in every other part of her life, is respectful, assumes the mantle of rebellious teenager. When Grandma reads the part about the Jews wandering through the desert for forty years, Mom cracks it’s because Moses was a man who refused to ask directions. When the talk to turns to Israel, Mom harps on about politics, even though she knows this gets Grandma crazy. When we eat matzo-ball soup, they argue about the cholesterol content of matzo balls.
Dad knows enough to keep quiet. And Phil plays with his hearing aids and dozes in and out of consciousness. I refill my “juice” glass many, many times.
After two hours, we get to the brisket, which means we get to stop talking about Exodus for a while, which is a relief, even if the brisket isn’t. It’s so dry it looks like beef jerky and tastes charred. I move it around my plate, while Grandma chitchats about her bridge club and the cruise she and Phil are taking. Then she asks about our annual summer trip to Rehoboth Beach, which she usually comes up for a portion of.
“What else do you have planned for the summer?” she asks me casually.
It’s a throwaway question, really. Along the lines of how are you? Or what’s new? I’m about to say, “Oh, this and that,” when Mom interrupts to say that I’m working in a lab. Then she tells Grandma all about it. A research lab at a pharmaceutical company. Apparently, I accepted the position just today.
It’s not like I didn’t know she would do this. It’s not like she hasn’t done this my entire life. It’s not like I haven’t let her.
The fury that fills me feels hot and cold, liquid and metal, coating my insides like a second skeleton, one stronger than my own. Maybe this is what allows me to say, “I’m not working in a lab this summer.”
“Well, it’s too late,” Mom snaps back. “I already called Dr. Baumgartner to decline his offer. If you’d had a preference, you had three weeks to make it known.”
“I’m not working at Dr. Baumgartner’s, either.”
“Did you line up something else?” Dad asks.
Mom scoffs, as if that’s unthinkable. And maybe it is. I’ve never had a job. Never had to get one. Never had to do anything for myself. I am helpless. I am a void. A disappointment. My helplessness, my dependency, my passivity, I feel it whorling into a little fiery ball, and I harness that ball, somewhere wondering how something made of weakness can feel so strong. But the ball grows hotter, so hot, the only thing I can do with it is hurl it. At her.
“I don’t think your lab would want me anymore, given that I’ve dropped most of my science courses and am going to drop the rest of them come fall,” I say, spite dripping from my voice. “See, I’m not pre-med anymore. So sorry to disappoint you.”
My sarcasm hangs in the humid air—and then, like a vapor, it floats away as I realize that, for the first time in my life, I’m not sorry to disappoint her. Maybe it’s the spite talking, or maybe Grandma’s secret wine, but I’m almost glad of it. I’m so tired of avoiding the unavoidable, because I feel like I’ve been disappointing her for such a long time.
“You’ve dropped pre-med?” Her voice is quiet, that lethal mix of fury and woundedness that could always take me down like a bullet to the heart.
“That was always your dream, Ellie,” Grandma says, shielding me. She turns to me. “You still haven’t answered my question, Ally. What are you doing this summer?”
Mom is looking so fragile and so angry, and I feel my will starting to break, feel myself starting to give in. But then I hear a voice—my voice—announcing this:
“I’m going back to Paris.”
It comes out, as if the idea were fully formed, something plotted for months, when in fact, it just slipped out, the same way all those admissions to Willem did. But when it does, I feel a thousand pounds lighter, my anger now fully dissipated, replaced by exhilaration flowing through me like sunlight and air.
This is how I felt that day in Paris with Willem. And this is how I know that it’s the right thing to do.
“Also, I’m learning French,” I add. And for some reason, this announcement makes the table erupt into pandemonium. Mom starts screaming at me about lying to her and throwing my whole future away. Dad is yelling about switching majors and who’s going to pay for my exchange program to Paris. Grandma is yelling at Mom for ruining yet another Seder.
So with all the commotion, it’s a little strange that anyone can hear Phil, who has barely said a word since the soup, when he pipes up, “Back to Paris, Ally? I thought Helen said your trip to Paris got canceled because they were striking.” He shakes his head. “They always seem to be striking over there.”
The table goes silent. Phil picks up a piece of matzo and starts munching on it. Mom, Dad, and Grandma all stare at me.
I could so easily cover this up. Phil’s hearing aid was turned down. He heard wrong. I could say that I want to go to Paris because I never made it there on the last trip. I’ve told so many lies. What’s one more?
But I don’t want to lie. I don’t want to cover up. I don’t want to pretend anymore. Because that day with Willem, I may have pretended to be someone named Lulu, but I had never been more honest in my life.
Maybe that’s the thing with liberation. It comes at a price. Forty years wandering through the desert. Or incurring the wrath of two very pissed-off parents.
I take a breath. I brave up.
“Back to Paris,” I say.