She moved toward him again then and felt his body relax as she encircled him in her arms.
“I love you so much, my baby,” she murmured in his ear, and then tucked the blanket tight around him as he rested his head on the pillow.
As she closed the door behind her, Esther didn’t worry so much about what Gary had confided in her, but rather her own words. Would the trust he had in her and Jacob be enough to quell her child’s fears? Would trust in God be enough? She realized then that her son’s words had matched her own unspoken fears, the fears that, now that she was a mother, she would always keep to herself. And again, she thought only about how much she loved this boy. And how she could never allow herself to think of the void in her life again, the missed opportunities, the children yet unborn.
Esther followed the aroma of baking raisin bread down the stairs and went into the dark kitchen, where she waited for the ding that would signal the end of the cooking cycle.
But that night, her cheek pressed next to the soft cotton of Jacob’s T-shirt, Esther found it difficult to fall asleep. While her body was steeped in exhaustion, her mind was working overtime. Gary had planted a seed in her mind, and now as she lay staring into the shards of moonlight against the ceiling, she recalled the last time she’d spoken with Boris, the last time she saw his hands one atop the other, forever in death.
It was an uneventful conversation after her mother had handed the receiver over to Boris, prodding him to say hello.
“How are you feeling, Papou?” she’d said, half listening as she washed out a dish of applesauce.
“Okay,” was the curt reply.
“Would you like to say hello to your grandson?” She knew she could always get an animated response from Boris when it came to Gary. Before he could answer, she stretched the extension cord as much as she could, bringing it into the living room. She waved to her son, who was seated on the rug counting his baseball cards.
“Come quick, Gary. Zayde’s on the phone.”
Gary took the receiver from her hand and listened as his grandfather posed the usual questions. How are you? How’s school? What’s new? And although the answers were always the same (Fine. Fine. Nothing.), Esther knew that just speaking with the child could lift Boris’s spirits. The conversation always ended the same way.
“Do you know that you are my best boy?”
“Thank you, Zayde.”
Gary handed the receiver back to Esther before plopping back down on the rug.
“Papou?”
“What a special boy you have!”
Esther smiled as she dried the dish and placed it in the cabinet.
“Thanks, Papou, but are you sure you’re okay? Mommy says that you’re not eating well. You barely ate supper tonight. And she made mushroom-and-barley soup, your favorite!”
She heard him bristle over the phone, picturing the scowl on his face.
“So what? If I’m not hungry, do I have to stuff myself? Did she tell you what else she cooked? Chicken. Boiled chicken and a potato. Every night the same thing.”
“Mommy’s cooking the foods that are best for you. We don’t want you to get sick.”
“You don’t want. Humph. Everyone thinks they know what is best for me. I’m old enough to know what’s best for me. And if I tell you I am not hungry, then I’m not hungry!”
Esther knew better than to insist.
“Okay, Papou, just be well.”
“You too. You and your son and your husband. That’s all I care about.”
After hanging up, Esther joined her son in the living room. She picked up a copy of Life Magazine and perused the glossy pages, thinking how very difficult all this must be for her mother. By the time she had tucked Gary into bed that night, she had forgotten all about the conversation with her father. She remembered it only the next day when she got the phone call.
It was her first funeral. Until then, she had avoided attending the sad events, figuring that it was bad luck. She made excuses when her elderly aunt passed away at age ninety-four, did the same when she heard of her second cousin’s demise. But now bad luck had caught up with her, and she could no longer avoid it. Her papou was dead.
Esther had always wondered what it would be like, how it would feel to lose a parent. Would she cry hysterically until she had no more tears to shed? Would she lose her mind? But when she heard the news that shortly after their conversation Boris had gone to bed and couldn’t be awakened in the morning, Esther didn’t scream or cry out. Instead, she telephoned an ambulance, then Jacob, and got dressed. By day’s end, she had arranged for the funeral for the next morning, secured his plot at the cemetery, spoken with the rabbi. They decided that Jacob, and Esther’s brother Menashe, would deliver the eulogies. Meanwhile, Esther was to make sure that her mother remained calm during the funeral. She carried a bottle of Valium in her purse just in case. She also had to find a way to tell Gary. She decided to tell him the truth. His zayde had gone to sleep, and he never woke up. He was old and he was sick, and now he was not in pain anymore. They would all miss him very much. The response seemed to satisfy the boy, who nodded and went back to reading one of his comic books.