Time passes. In six months, a human can go from an embryo to a baby to a child staring with wonder between the bars of a crib to a toddler running out the door, from a boy whose future lay before him like a brilliant new day to . . . to what? To grieving parents, to nothing. No movement, no future, no time.
It was also a time of learning for Esther. Since she was a girl, she had filled her days with things to do; now all the tasks that had occupied her time seemed irrelevant, worthless. So she relearned new things, a new way to be. Florrie knew someone who managed a card store downtown, and with a simple phone call, Esther became the new cashier and salesgirl Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. She learned to sew—skirts and drapes and doilies—took a class in ceramics from which she brought home vases for flowers, and purple-and-yellow-dotted teapots. Esther joined a women’s club, where she knitted and helped collect money for the town library, and while she did not always chat about mundane things like some of the others, she listened. And when she had quiet time to think (knowing full well that thought worked as a parasite to sanity), there was always Florrie, arm stretched out to offer a muffin and a cup of steaming tea or sit with her, watching All My Children or another soap opera, an outlet for her fears. But as the days cooled and the sun shimmered low in the sky, the memories of what she could no longer have filled her mind, and often, as Esther sat alone on the couch waiting for Jacob to walk in the door, tears would spring to her eyes. But in those months, Jacob was no comfort. Not to Esther and not to himself.
Almost too soon after the customary period, Jacob had returned to work. It was there that he could remain invisible, hiding as he went through his daily rituals of paperwork and visits to tenants, lawyers, and associates. When he came home late in the evening, he spoke little except for a customary nod of the head when he walked in, not even bothering to assist with the dishes, or carry the garbage outdoors. The flowers on the hedges had begun to droop, and the grass turned yellow from lack of care, as more cigarette butts scattered on the front porch and lay cold, dormant in ashtrays on the end tables. Except for when he took his meals, Jacob haunted the bedroom silently, reading the paper or going over material from the office. He steadfastly refused all her appeals to come outside, take a walk in the park, or see a movie. Of course, going to a ball game was out of the question. While Jacob offered no solace for his wife, neither did he complain nor even give voice to the guilt Esther believe consumed him even now, just over a year later. He expressed no sorrow, at least not openly, no anger or resignation. Her husband had become invisible.
It was Zalman who remained in the house, there to help her fold the laundry or ask if she wanted another cup of tea. It wasn’t until a month after the tragedy that she remembered. He had been ready to leave, had packed his things and had even secured a new job. And yet he was there, as always, comforting, supporting. Filling the spaces Jacob had left.
But even though Jacob had become invisible, unreachable, Esther felt that during those days she understood him more than ever. He had always been an enigma in his refusal to talk about his life as a boy, before his parents and brother lost their lives brutally, she guessed, in the war. Now that she, too, knew tragedy, perhaps the greatest tragedy anyone could realize, she understood the relief that sometimes silence could bring. Sometimes, she reasoned to herself, it was better to close oneself off, not revisit the sadness. Finally, Esther knew her husband, why he never so much as mentioned what his parents were like in better times, if his mother had tucked him into bed at night, if his father had shown him how to throw a ball, as he had with Gary.
The sun was at its full height that Sunday after Esther and Zalman returned from a trip to the local appetizing store, where they had picked up a whole whitefish and some egg bagels, a rare dairy treat for the evening’s dinner. They were entering the kitchen when they heard the sound of rummaging and drawers slamming upstairs. They dropped their packages on the counter, and Esther rushed up the stairs where she found Jacob in not their bedroom, but Gary’s, where he was tossing armloads of their son’s shirts, sweaters, and pants into jumbo plastic garbage bags.
“Jacob! What are you doing?” she cried, covering her eyes with her hand. She hadn’t entered her child’s room since that sunny morning in spring, and since then the door had been kept tightly shut.
“Getting rid of things,” was the curt reply. In a frenzy, he piled a drawer full of white T-shirts into the top of the bag. A framed photograph of kindergarten graduates was lying on the oak floor planks next to the round aqua-colored shag rug, its glass pane shattered. Some of Gary’s rudimentary crayon drawings had been hastily torn off the walls and lay crumpled and abandoned on the bedspread decorated with varicolored baseballs. The bed remained as she had left it, bedsheets neatly tucked into the corners.