On her return from Boston, Alma realized that during the years she had been away the Belasco family had changed more than was transmitted in their letters. For the first few days she felt superfluous, like a visitor passing through, and wondered not only what her place was in this family but what she was going to do with her life. San Francisco seemed provincial to her; to make a name for herself with her painting she would have to go to New York, where she could be among famous artists and closer to European influences.
Three Belasco grandchildren had been born: Martha had a three-month-old boy, and Sarah had twins, who by some flaw in the laws of genetics had come out looking like Scandinavians. Nathaniel headed the family law firm and lived alone in a penthouse with a view over the bay. A man of few words and few friends, he filled his leisure time sailing on his yacht. At twenty-seven he was still resisting his mother’s insistent campaign to find him a suitable wife. There were more than enough candidates, because Nathaniel was from a good family, had money, and was extremely handsome. He had turned into the mensch his father had wanted, and all the matchmakers in the Jewish community had their eyes on him. Aunt Lillian had not changed much; she was the same generous and active woman as before. Her deafness had grown worse, and so she shouted all the time. Her hair had turned gray, but she refused to dye it because she had no wish to seem younger; quite the opposite. Her husband had suddenly been hit by the weight of two decades, so that the few years’ age difference between them appeared to have tripled.
Isaac had suffered a heart attack, and although he had recovered, he was left weakened. He forced himself to go to the office for a couple of hours each day but had delegated all the work to Nathaniel. He had abandoned social life, which had never attracted him anyway. He read a lot, and above all enjoyed sitting in his garden pergola to enjoy the view of the sea and the bay. He grew seedlings in the greenhouse, and studied books about the law and plants. He had grown sentimental with the years, so that even the most trivial emotions brought tears to his eyes. Lillian would often feel a stab of fear in her guts. “Promise me you won’t die before me, Isaac,” she demanded whenever he was short of breath and crawled into bed and collapsed, his face as pale as the sheets, his bones aching. Lillian had always counted on a cook and knew nothing about food, but when her husband started to decline she took it upon herself to prepare magical soups from recipes her mother had written in a notebook for her. She had forced Isaac to see a dozen doctors, accompanying him to make sure he didn’t hide his problems from her, and she herself gave him his medicines. She also employed more esoteric methods. She called on God, not only at dawn and dusk as required, but at all hours: Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. For Isaac’s protection he had a blue Turkish evil eye and a painted tin hand of Fatima hanging from the bedpost; a candle was always lit on his chest of drawers, next to Hebrew and Christian Bibles and a jar of holy water that one of the domestic staff had brought from the Shrine of Saint Jude.
“What on earth is this?” Isaac asked the day a skeleton wearing a top hat appeared on his bedside table.
“Baron Samedi. I had it sent here from New Orleans. He’s the god of death and also of good health,” Lillian told him.