Cleopatra and Frankenstein(118)

“What if he disagrees?” I ask.

My mother shrugs. “So what?”

“That’s it?” says Levi. “Ten years of Hebrew school, and it comes to that? So what?”

“Let me tell you something,” says my mother. “Those are two of the most powerful words in the English language. Right between them is a free and happy life.”

*

My father has been buried. I’m in the garage looking for birdseed for my mother. I clamber over piles of life’s detritus. Boxes of school yearbooks. A rusty stationary bike. A vase Levi made in middle school. Finally I see a bag of birdseed on the top shelf.

I’m just reaching up for it when I trip over some electrical cord and skid my knees against the cement floor. I’m on all fours. Pain shoots through me. I grab the baseball bat and use it to prop myself back up. Then I start hitting. I pummel a cardboard box filled with holiday decorations. I thwack the stationary bike. I hit a deflated soccer ball like a pi?ata. I hit the metal door of the garage until it dents. It sends reverberations through the walls that are so strong, Levi’s vase wobbles and falls off the shelf. It shatters on the floor just as Levi appears in the doorway. He looks at the vase, then at the bat, then at me.

“Birdseed,” I say.

*

I find Levi crouched on the basement floor, gluing his vase back together.

“God, Levi,” I say. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you cared about this.”

He looks up at me, a shard of vase in his hand. “I don’t.” He shrugs. “I’m doing kintsugi.”

“What?”

“Kintsugi,” he says. “It’s the Japanese art of mending broken pottery.”

“Again, what?”

“They use a special gold lacquer, so the mended pot becomes more beautiful than before it was broken.”

“But you’re just using superglue,” I say.

“Yeah,” says Levi. “But the principle still stands.”

I sit down on the floor across from him. “How do you know all this stuff?”

“What stuff?”

“About India and Japan and everything. You’ve never left America.”

“I’ve been to Canada.”

“Okay.”

Levi looks up at me from the piece he’s gluing distractedly. “All day I sit behind the hot food counter,” he says. “And I read.”

I nod. “You really think the vase will be more beautiful now?”

“Oh yeah,” he says. “More character.”

“Good,” I say.

Levi continues gluing with quiet concentration. His large, knobby hands are just like my father’s.

“People are like this too, you know,” he says eventually. “We break. We put ourselves back together. The cracks are the best part. You don’t have to hide them.”

“You really believe that?” I say.

“Mm-hm,” he says, without looking up. “Believe it. See it in you.”

“This is very after-school special of you, Levi,” I say.

“What can I say,” he says. “I’m a sentimental motherfucker.”

*

I’m trying to write another episode of Human Garbage when an email pops up on my screen. I almost fall off my seat. Just seeing his name feels like I’ve been punched in the vagina.

Dear E,

Jacky told me your father passed away. Please know how sorry I was to hear it. I remember you talking about him and he sounded like a good man. I know you will miss him. I wish I could be there to comfort you because … Well, Jesus, Eleanor, I miss you.

Please let me see you again.

F.

*

It’s the day of the shiva and half the synagogue is coming over. My mother and I wake up early to finish setting out the bagels, gefilte fish, cream cheese, and an array of other beige foods.

“They’re not going to think it’s weird we’re holding it here?” I ask. “At his ex-wife’s house?”

“What did I tell you about what other people think?” asks my mother.

“‘So what?’” I say.

“Exactly.”

*

Levi’s girlfriend has come down for the day. It seems there are a couple of things Levi neglected to tell us about her. First, that she is a very small Korean woman, which I guess isn’t something that necessarily needs to be mentioned. Second, that she is pregnant, which I feel is probably higher on the list.

“Ma, Eleanor,” says Levi. “This is Min.”

Gobsmacked. That is the only word I can think of to describe my mother’s face.

“It’s such a pleasure to meet you,” says Min. “Do you have a place I can plug in my curling iron?”

*

That guy I went on a date with, my mother’s friend’s broker’s son, is here in my home, along with my mother’s friend and the broker. None of this is good news.

“Mayhismemorybeablessingareyoustillsingle,” says my mother’s friend, just like that, without even a breath, then smears her lipstick on my cheek.

*

The broker’s son comes and finds me later, looking as smug as ever.

“Sorry about your dad,” he says.

“Thanks,” I say.