The Middlesteins(40)

And don’t even get her started on her mother, the intensity of Emily’s emotions in opposition to her mother’s very being were so strong that it had propelled her, late at night, out her window one week before, across the roof, and over to the tall, Colonial-style pillars that guarded the front porch, which she attempted to cling to and slide down, immediately flopping out onto the front driveway, slamming her head on the ground, and breaking her left arm neatly, in fact, so neatly that it inspired her doctor to say, “You got lucky,” which made her laugh, and also her parents, too, because of course no one in that room felt lucky.

It was not even that surprising when her father started to go bald, entire chunks of hair disappearing every day, as if an evil hair troll snuck into his bedroom every night while he slept and whisked it off his head and into the night. Here was another thing that was happening to someone she knew and loved. Here was another thing that was wrong with the world. Add it to the list of Things That Suck, an actual, brand-new list that existed in a journal that she kept in her locker at school, seemingly the only place safe in the universe from her mother or the cleaning woman, Galenka, who had been tending to their house for so long that she felt perfectly entitled to invade every part of Emily’s room, which was fine when she’d been five, but not when she was nearly thirteen.

“Mortality”—that was a word she had learned recently, something that had been discussed in Hebrew school. She had heard it before, she knew what it meant, but it had never applied before. Life in the biblical world was so fragile. Everyone was afraid of death at any moment. Everything was so epic, there was so much potential for disaster, storms, floods, pestilence. Diabetes (now also on the Things That Suck list) felt biblical. So did baldness. Never before had Emily realized that the world was so heavy, as heavy as her grandmother’s flesh heaving next to her on the high-school track, so heavy that she could feel it balancing on her neck and back. She believed that her brother did not feel the same weight as her. She pitied him for his blindness, and she envied him for his freedom, and if she had known just a few months before, during more innocent times, that she would feel that way for the rest of her life, not just about Josh but about a lot of people in the world, which is to say (in a polite way) conflicted, she would have treasured those unaware, nonjudgmental, preadolescent moments more thoroughly. (Oh, to be eleven again!) Because once you know, once you really know how the world works, you can’t unknow it.

And now Emily was starting to know.

“No one in our family is bald,” huffed her grandmother. “The whole thing is ridiculous. We come from strong stock.”

On the far side of the high school’s parking lot, there was a baseball field; a visiting team warmed up, a coach cracking pop-ups to the outfield. Even from a distance, the baseball players looked tall to her. The idea of being older and bigger made her tingle. She could not wait to get to high school. She was absolutely certain that things would be better in high school: the classes, the people, the quality of life.

“I don’t think people even understand how strong our gene pool is,” said her grandmother. “You’ve got a lot of Russian blood in you. Russians are built to withstand winter.”

Emily could admit that her life wasn’t so bad now, and that getting older and bigger meant that there were more risks involved. She just wanted more out of it. Couldn’t she do better? Couldn’t everyone just do a little bit better?

“Your great-grandfather fled Ukraine to come here. He walked through snow and ice and over mountains just to catch a train to Germany, and then he had to sit on that train for weeks. And he had nothing. Crusts of old bread and cheese. He had one potato he would peel every other day, and he would let the skin sit in his mouth for hours just so he could suck in every last vitamin. Could you imagine that?”

Emily was almost certain her grandmother was lying to her, but she loved the way she was telling the story, the way her voice giddily rose and fell, almost drunkenly, and yet her voice was crisp, and she articulated her words beautifully.

“Would you like that, kiddo? An uncooked potato skin for dinner?” Her grandmother poked her in her delicate belly, and Emily pulled away and laughed.

“No potato skins for me, thanks,” said Emily.

“And after all that, he made his way to Germany, took one look at all the mishegas there, and got on a boat and spent four more weeks crowded together with a bunch of other Jews trying to get the hell out of there, and the whole time he was still peeling that one potato.”

“Was it a big potato to start?” said Emily, stifling laughter.

“It was a pretty big potato, I have to admit,” said her grandmother. “But still! To only eat potato for such a long time, that’s not that much fun, right?”

Emily nodded somberly.

“So by the time he got to America, he was just skin and bones. He barely made it alive.” Her grandmother’s voice started to quiver. “And he lost a lot of his friends and family along the way. You should have heard him talk about it. I’m sorry you didn’t get to know him like I did. He was a really nice man. He wrote beautiful letters.”

Emily took her grandmother’s arm with her one good arm. They had one more lap to walk.

“But here is the point, Emily. Are you ready for the point?”

“Yes,” said Emily.

“Even after traveling all that way, and even on a diet composed almost exclusively of potato skin, all that for months and months, your great-grandfather still showed up in America with a full head of hair,” she said triumphantly. “So I don’t know what the hell is wrong with your father.”