The Book of V.: A Novel(54)

MANHATTAN


LILY


For She Had Neither Father Nor Mother



Ruth is gone. It was sepsis, finally, one of the words Lily learned to dread, though sitting now with her brothers, in a bar a few blocks from the hospital, she cannot seem to feel what she imagined she would feel. Lily’s and Lionel’s spouses have taken their children home and to a hotel, respectively. Ian has called his boyfriend in California. He was crying when he hung up but sits silently now, sliding his whiskey through closed lips, while Lionel, clearly in shock, keeps talking. He says words he has already said, things like Four blocks from the hospital, three siblings, four hours dead and And then you called me and I still didn’t get it, I didn’t know how fast it would happen, I wouldn’t have brought the kids, I would have just gotten in the car?… Ian was already in the city, visiting, but Lionel, who lives so much closer, missed Ruth’s last cogent hour. Lily called as he was driving, so he knew, but you can’t know such a thing until you know it. He talks. All three of them drink. And soon—Lionel announces—it has been not four but five hours since their mother died.

Lily finds herself thinking not of Ruth, or even of Ruth’s body, but of the hospital room itself, its steady blankness, like a clean sheet, before and as and after Ruth died, and of how strange it is that she and her brothers will likely never return to it.

“What happens now?”

The room had been a different room from the one Ruth had been in during her first hospitalization, but it had also, of course, been the same room, the room Ruth had known Lily had not wanted to leave but had her thrown out of anyway. Go home. As if she was not home, with Ruth.

“Lily?”

Lily feels Lionel’s glass nudging hers and looks up.

“What do we do now?” her brother says. “With her body, and her apartment, and her finances?…”

His shock is in his eyes. It’s bigger than Lily realized, and more encompassing; he is shocked, she sees, not only that Ruth is dead but that she has died without leaving him instructions. That his sister is now the one likely to know what he does not. He can’t imagine all she knows—about cancer, yes, but also about cards for doctors and nurses, and cremation versus burial, etc. They have traveled a great distance since the night five weeks ago when he called her with the news, when Lionel was the one Ruth chose to tell first and Lily was na?ve enough to think her mother might make it to Purim.

“The funeral home is coming for her,” Lily says gently. “Tomorrow’s the burial, then we’ll sit shiva?…”

Lionel groans. “The funeral the day after is ridiculous. It’s not like we can reach all the people she knew in twenty-four hours.”

“We’ll have a memorial service in a couple weeks. She and I talked about—”

“I still don’t get why she had to be so Jewish.”

“I don’t know, Li, but it’s what—”

“Seriously, who does that? Who marries a Jewish guy who isn’t even remotely observant, converts just as he’s leaving you, then keeps going whole hog like you’re actually the Jew?”

“I think you are,” Ian offers. “If you convert. Also, whole hog?…”

“But not really.” Lionel scowls. “And why? What was her end game?”

Ian chuckles into his glass. “You’re such an asshole. There was no end game. I think she liked the people.”

“So hang out with them! It was all so embarrassing. My mother is having a bat mitzvah. Good god. And then when we had to do Shabbat on Fridays and she’d put her hand on our heads and say, May you be Lionel, in all that you are? The worst.”

Ian signals for another round, and then they’re quiet for a while, even Lionel. Lily remembers her mother doing that, though hanging from the memory there is no strong feeling. But it would have been different for Lionel, who was already twelve when Ruth converted. Even Ian, who had just turned eleven and had a bar mitzvah two years later, must have gotten used to life without Shabbat and general Jewishness. Whereas Lily had been seven, old enough to vaguely remember before but not old enough to be attached to it. For Lily, the divide has always seemed to be about her father leaving. Not that she was older when that happened; like Lionel, she is pretty sure the conversion and separation were concurrent events. Just that her father has figured in her mind as the bigger deal.

“You know what she told me?” she says. “He didn’t leave. She threw him out.”

“That’s not true,” Lionel says immediately.

“It’s what she told me.”

“I understand. But it’s not true.”

“Why would she say it, then?”

“For the same reason anyone says anything—because she wanted it to be true?”

“Is that why you say things, Lionel?”

Ian swivels on his stool. “Please stop. It could be true.”

Lionel snorts. “Are you kidding me? There’s no way.”

“What do your kids know of your marriage?”

Lionel slits his eyes.

“Ahhh,” Ian says with a note of triumph, and suddenly Lily is disgusted by them all. “Forget it,” she says, slapping a hand on the bar. “Who cares? No one cares. Do you know what else she said to me? Just yesterday? This one will neither surprise nor offend.”