My Last Innocent Year(45)

“Oh, yeah? Like what?”

“Well, we’re selling takeout sandwiches, so people can eat on the go. And this computer thing. He thinks it can extend our reach. That’s how he puts it: ‘Extend our reach.’ He thinks someday soon people will buy whitefish salad on the World Wide Web.” He raised an eyebrow. “Good thing I’m not paying him that much.” He tapped the side of the computer monitor. “Okay, let me finish up and we’ll get going.”

We were spending the holiday in Rockland County with my mother’s cousin Elaine and her second husband, Sol. Leon and Fanny had invited us to their seder, an invitation Benji repeated before he left, but Abe hated spending the holidays at his brother’s: “Too much praying.” Elaine and Sol’s seder was more laid-back and had a pleasant, bohemian vibe, lots of hand-holding and off-key singing, colorful prayer shawls and not too much Hebrew. I liked it at Elaine and Sol’s. Abe did, too, although he complained about the traffic the whole way there.

“You look beautiful, darling,” Elaine said, kissing me wetly on one cheek. “Like your mother. Doesn’t she look just like Viv, Sol?” She wiped away a tear. “Oh gosh, look at me.” Sol put an arm around her shoulders.

“How are things in New Hampshire?” Sol asked. He had a long gray ponytail and a body like a refrigerator. “Any nice boys up there?”

“She’s not there to meet boys, Sol,” Elaine said, giving his forearm a gentle slap. “Honestly.”

Elaine and Sol’s dining room table was set for twenty, far more than it could comfortably hold. Elaine wasn’t a skilled hostess like my mother, but the room had a warm, pleasant feeling that made me feel sleepy and cared for. If there were too many rules at Fanny and Leon’s, at Elaine and Sol’s it wasn’t clear there were any rules at all. Throughout the seder, people interrupted, had side conversations, stood up, walked around. I sat quietly, turning the pages of my Haggadah and wondering why my father had insisted I come home for this. I was distracted by the painting on the wall above the sideboard, an abstract my mother had made years before. She had never had much luck with abstracts—landscapes and still lifes were easier to sell—but Elaine had liked this one so much, my mother gave it to her.

I remembered the day she painted it. It was a few weeks after her diagnosis, long before we understood what it meant, what we were in for. She’d spent the night on the couch, which wasn’t unusual. But that morning, she didn’t stir as I clomped around the kitchen, getting ready for school. Abe was already gone. Before I left, I went into the living room to say goodbye.

“Mom,” I said, placing a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t answer. Her hair was wild, and she felt so thin through her long gray T-shirt.

“Mom,” I said again.

“What time is it?” she asked. Her voice was hoarse and cracked, as if she’d been screaming.

“It’s almost eight. Mom, are you okay?” I was starting to get scared. Was this the cancer? Was she dying already?

She reached for my hand. Her fingernails were dirty and broken.

“Find a man who understands you, baby. Promise me that, okay?” There were tears in her eyes. She was looking at me so intensely, I had to look away. I saw that she had taken out all of her paintings and had them leaned up against the walls. Bowls of fruit and plates of walnuts, their shells ridged and bumpy like brains. The scene outside our window, the pitted sidewalk, the greasy puddle at the curb. So many paintings, visions of the world the way she saw it. How could it be I’d never really looked at them before?

I stood up and walked over to the easel. On it was the painting she’d been working on the night before, the one that now hung in Elaine and Sol’s dining room. The paint, a bright vivid turquoise like the blue of a California swimming pool, was still wet. The same color was in my mother’s hair, on her cheek, down the front of her shirt.

“What do you think of that one?” she asked.

I looked back at the painting and tried to think of something to say. My mother had never asked me about her work before, but maybe I was old enough now to have an opinion. This one was different from her other work, more abstract and urgent, the brushstrokes wild and sensual. I tried to make out faces, eyes, recognizable parts of human forms, but everything was fractured, split open, like fruit or rot.

“It scares me,” I said.

My mother sat up and reached for her cigarettes. The scrape of the match was the loudest sound in the room.

“That’s what your father said.” And then she stood up and walked into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.

We left Elaine and Sol’s early to beat the traffic. When we got home, Abe went into the kitchen.

“I have some macaroons. You want some?”

“Dad, come on. We just ate so much.”

He put on the kettle, then sat down at the kitchen table. I noticed there were still three chairs around it, although he needed only one.

“Did you see what’s going on at Litkowski’s?” he asked, setting a plate of cookies in front of me.

“I saw. He sold the building?”

“They offered him a fortune. He couldn’t say no. His son’s a dentist in Manhasset. He doesn’t want to bake bread for a living.”

“What are they building?” I asked. Despite myself, I picked up a cookie and took a bite.