There is relief in the room. People applaud the speech. This seems inappropriate, but my mother really nailed it. I feel giddy on her behalf.
I can’t believe there is more to the service, that anyone would want to follow that act. But: A jazz band plays, a woman sings. A few more family members speak. And then, at last, it is time to eat. Everyone rises and I see Felix get up, leaning heavily on a cane. I could kick it out beneath him, a collapse, rubble, a pile of Felix. But I simply watch him hobble out the door, bidding no one goodbye. I don’t even know if he’s really who I think he is. He may be a ghost of all of them. All of these men.
We make our way to a reception room behind the sanctuary. There are trays of smoked salmon everywhere, mounds of it, with rye bread and capers and onions, and tiny, eggy snacks, pastries and quiches, and slim slices of prosciutto, rolled, and glistening pearls of mozzarella. A small bar in the corner serves rosé and Chardonnay, and some sort of amber hard liquor looms on a back table. I can’t decide what to do first, eat or drink. I have been thirsty since I was a teenager, but where I come from, my bloodline, possesses hundreds of years of hunger. “Don’t sleep on the whitefish salad,” says my mother. “It’s gorgeous.”
We pile our plates liberally with food, then we lean against a back wall, a window above us, sunlight and shadows crisscrossing the room. “Good spread,” I say. “Of course,” says my mother. “I think Morty took care of it.” “I’m sure it wasn’t Corbin,” I say. “Corbin is a joke,” says my mother. “Morty might be a baby, but at least he had his act together.” “Do you even like men?” I say. “I don’t know,” says my mother. “Sometimes?” “Same,” I say.
My mother made it through, I suddenly realize. She didn’t do it all on her own, though who does? But the act of watching her watch these men, her being with me, in our own little corner, thrills me. God, what if I just forgave her? What if I was just done, too? What if I was fine with myself? What if I made it through? And then I think: I’m so glad I fired my therapist. I got this all on my own.
We go back for seconds, without acknowledging any sense of gluttony. After a while she says, “I liked your father.” “I know, he was the best. I mean he was absolutely the worst, but he was so much fun,” I say. “Sure he was fun. He was on drugs,” she says. Finally I decide to get a drink. “Me too, me too,” says my mother.
One and a half glasses in, a man approaches us and asks my mother quite seriously if she’ll speak at his funeral. My mother clutches at him and says, “Oh my god, are you sick?” and he says, “No, but you did such a nice job, I thought I’d make a reservation in advance.” It quickly becomes the joke of the party, people asking my mother to speak at their own funeral. People she knows, people she doesn’t know. “What a celebrity you are,” I say, as a man with whitefish salad on his cheek meanders off. “Fans everywhere.”
“Can you believe I spent so much time with these goons?” she says. “Except for Larry.”
We watch Larry, a divorce lawyer with strong leftist tendencies, tall, bald, sun-kissed, funny, his laughter booming, holding hands with his not-so-new wife. They’re up from Philadelphia.
“He is lovely,” I admit.
“Larry’s the one who got away,” my mother muses.
His wife is wearing a sleeveless pink blouse, and her arms are freckled and toned. She used to own a dance studio.
“She’s a widow, too,” says my mother. “Only her husband was rich. And she didn’t have any children.”
“Surely you are not blaming your failure to secure Larry’s affections on my existence,” I say.
“No. It was all my own fault. I wasted time on these men. And now they seem like ghosts to me.”
I drain the rest of my glass. “I forgive you, Mom,” I say, but of course by saying this I am not forgiving her at all, because I’m bringing it up, I’m starting a little shitstorm, it’s pure patented passive aggression. Anyway, it’s too late now. Here we go.
“For what?”
“For everything from when I was a kid. With these men.”
“You forgive me. OK, child.”
She guzzles her wine, then laughs wildly.
“Look, you had it easier than me,” she says. “You think Nana and Papa were busy supporting women’s rights? No, they wanted me to meet a nice man and get married and cook and clean for him and give them grandchildren, and that’s it. You were born into a world where feminism existed and was readily available to you. I had to acquire that knowledge. I didn’t know I could be on my own.”
“You still bug me about marriage all the time. You just did it forty-five minutes ago.”
“I want you to have a copilot, that’s all,” she says. “Marriage is hard but I still think it would make things easier for you. It might make you happier.”
“Betsy was married three times and in the end she died all by herself, quite happily. She was better off without those people. You were the one who loved her best, Mom.”
“It’s just nice to have something to believe in,” she says. “Marriage is a beautiful idea.”
“But why can’t you just believe in me?” I say.
This is when my mother starts to cry. I haven’t seen her cry since my father died and even then she was so pissed off at him for overdosing that it wasn’t pure, there was too much anger mixed in there for her to get it all out properly. But this is her weeping, and this is me holding her. “I’m sorry your friend died,” I say. I let her sob into me.
“I’m only in town for the day,” she says. “Can we just love each other?”
I agree to it. I agree to love.
She goes off to get us more food, and I cross the room to the bar. In the corner I see Larry slow-dancing with his wife for a second. One arm up, the other around her waist. Two Jews, nuzzling quietly in the back room of a church. Still alive, still in love. The two of them together, a beautiful idea.
The Dinner Party
The year of all the dinner parties is 1992. I am seventeen years old, and my father has been dead for two years. After he passed away, we ran through what little savings we had in a few months. Forget about my mother making more money at her job, those grassroots organizations had nothing to spare. A small token raise, we’re sorry for your loss. My mother starts throwing these rent-raising dinner parties to make a little extra cash. All-you-can-eat vegetarian food and boxed wine. The only people who come are a bunch of middle-aged stoner men. Sometimes these men will bring her gifts, fancy comestibles or wine or weed, on top of the ten dollars they paid to eat her food. It’s her way of keeping things going.