Mira and Raj work on the vegetables while Gertie makes her famous stuffing. Daniel and Ruby tend to the bird, an eighteen-pound beast slathered in butter and garlic and thyme. In early afternoon, while most of the food is roasting or waiting to roast and Mira is wiping the counters down, Raj takes a business call in the guest room. Gertie naps. Ruby and Daniel sit in the living room: Daniel in the rocking chair with the laptop, Ruby on the couch with a book of sudoku puzzles. Snow drifts outside the window, melting as soon as it touches the glass.
Daniel is researching the Rom: how they originated in India, how they left to escape religious persecution and slavery. They traveled west, into Europe and the Balkans, and began to tell fortunes as refugees. Half a million were killed in the Holocaust. It reminds him of the story of the Jews. Exodus and wandering, resilience and adaptation. Even the famous Romani proverb, Amari cˇhib s’amari zor – ‘Our language is our strength’ – sounds like something his father would have said. Daniel takes a dry-cleaning receipt from his pocket and writes the phrase down, along with a second proverb: Thoughts have wings.
Lately, he has struggled to sustain a connection with God. One year ago, he decided to explore Jewish theology. He thought of it as a tribute to Saul, and he hoped for solace about the deaths of his siblings. But he found little: on the topics of death and immortality, Judaism has little to say. While other religions are concerned with dying, Jews are most concerned with living. The Torah focuses on olam ha-ze: ‘this world.’
‘Are you working?’ Ruby asks.
Daniel looks up. The sun is nestled just above the Catskills, the mountains a mellow wash of periwinkle and peach. Ruby is curled against the arm of the couch.
‘Not really.’ Daniel shuts the lid of the laptop. ‘You?’
Ruby shrugs. ‘Not really.’ She closes her sudoku book.
‘I don’t know how you do those puzzles,’ Daniel says. ‘They look like Greek to me.’
‘You have a lot of downtime, doing a show. If you don’t find something else you’re good at, you’ll go crazy. I like solving things.’
Ruby tucks her legs to one side, clad today in a different pair of Juicy sweatpants. Her hair is a bulbous bird’s nest of a bun. Daniel realizes that he’ll miss her when she goes.
‘You’d be a good doctor,’ he says.
‘I hope so.’ When she lifts her head to look at him, her face is vulnerable. A surprise: she cares what he thinks. ‘I want to be one.’
‘You do? What about your show?’
‘I won’t do that forever.’
She speaks in a flat, matter-of-fact tone that Daniel can’t quite parse. Does Raj know about this? He would never be able to have a relationship with another assistant like the one he has with Ruby. Daniel thinks of the conversation they had the previous morning, the tension when Ruby and Raj discussed their schedule. Raj claimed it was simple. Rubina, he said, on the other hand –
Ruby flicks her hair over one shoulder. She isn’t matter-of-fact, he sees. She’s annoyed.
‘I mean, Jesus,’ she says, ‘I want to go to college, I want to be a real person. I want to do something that matters.’
‘Your mother didn’t want to be a real person.’
The words are out before Daniel can stop them. His voice is low and he’s smiling, for somehow, when he thinks of Klara, this is what comes to mind first: her gall, her daring. Not what happened later.
‘So?’ Ruby’s cheeks flush. There’s a sheen to her eyes that flashes in the light from the living room lamp. ‘So what about my mom?’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Daniel feels ill. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’
Ruby opens her mouth, closes it. He’s losing her already, she’s leaving for that foreign, teenage-girl place: mountains of resentment, potholes he can’t see.
‘Your mother. She was special,’ Daniel says. It feels urgent, that he convince her of this. ‘That doesn’t mean you have to be like her. I just want you to know.’
‘I know that,’ says Ruby dully. ‘Everyone tells me that.’
She leaves to take a walk in the snow. Daniel watches her clomp through the slush in her Ugg boots and hooded sweatshirt, dark tendrils of hair floating next to her face, before she disappears into the trees.
25.
Hallelujah. Praise God in his sanctuary. Praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise him for his mighty acts. Praise him according to his abundant greatness. Praise him with the blast of the horn. Praise him with the psaltery” ’ – here Gertie pauses – ‘ “and harp.” ’
‘What’s a psaltery?’ asks Ruby.
When she returned from her walk, she was chipper again. Now she sits between Raj and Gertie on one side of the table. Mira and Daniel hold hands on the other.
‘I don’t know,’ says Gertie, frowning at the Tehillim.
‘Hang on. I’ll look it up on Wikipedia.’ Ruby pulls her flip phone out of a pocket and types efficiently on the tiny keys. ‘Okay. “The bowed psaltery is a type of psaltery or zither that is played with a bow. In contrast to the centuries-old plucked psaltery, the bowed psaltery appears to be a twentieth-century invention.” ’ She shuts the phone. ‘Well, that was helpful. As you were, Grandma.’
Gertie returns to the book. ‘ “Praise him with the timbrel and dance. Praise him with the loud-sounding cymbals. Let every thing that hath breath praise HaShem. Hallelujah.” ’
‘Amen,’ says Mira, quietly. She squeezes Daniel’s hand. ‘Let’s eat.’
Daniel squeezes her back, but he feels unsettled. That afternoon, he learned of an explosion in the Sadr City district of Baghdad. Five car bombs and a mortar shell killed more than two hundred people, largely Shiites. He takes a long sip of wine, a Malbec. He had a glass or two of a white Mira uncorked while they were cooking, but he’s still waiting for the pleasant fog that comes over him when he drinks.
Gertie looks at Ruby and Raj. ‘What time are you leaving tomorrow?’
‘Early,’ says Raj.
‘Unfortunately,’ says Ruby.
‘We have a show in the city at seven,’ Raj says. ‘We should be there before noon to meet the crew.’
‘I wish you didn’t have to,’ Gertie says. ‘I wish you’d stay a little longer.’
‘Me, too,’ says Ruby. ‘But you can come visit us in Vegas. You’d have your own suite. And I can introduce you to Krystal. She’s a Shetland and a total chub. She probably eats an acre of grass a day.’
‘My goodness,’ says Mira, laughing. She cuts a group of green beans in half with her fork. ‘Now, I have a personal request. I didn’t want to bring it up, because I’m sure people ask this sort of thing all the time, the way our friends are always trying to get Daniel to diagnose them – but we have two magicians in the house, and I can’t let you leave without trying.’
Raj raises his eyebrows. It’s nearly silent in the dining room – a result of this wooded area of Kingston.
Mira sets down her fork; she’s blushing. ‘When I was young, a street magician did a card trick for me. He asked me to pick a card as he flipped through the deck, which couldn’t have taken more than a second. I picked the nine of hearts. And that was what he guessed. I made him do the trick another time to make sure the deck wasn’t filled with nines of hearts. I’ve never been able to figure out how he did it.’
Raj and Ruby share a glance.
‘Forcing,’ says Ruby. ‘When a magician manipulates your decisions.’