I assess my unremarkable striped skirt and linen button-up. “Hey, Mom. Yeah, not too bad.”
It’s okay. Maybe we’re talking about traffic, but that’s not a bad omen. Besides, I’m sure Hannah would have as much to say about traffic as small talk as I do about weather. We continue the introductions as Javier walks in carrying Cassie, who buries her face in his chest, suddenly shy.
“You certainly look familiar,” my mother says to Russell as Alex takes his coat. “I’m sure I’ve seen you on TV.”
“Are you a meaty—meter—weatherperson, too?” Cassie asks, stumbling over the word, her face scrunching up with the effort of it all. Her curly hair is in two pigtails today.
“I’m not,” he says, bending at the knees a bit so he can be eye level with her. “I cover sports. But I still get rained on a lot of the time.”
Cassie gasps, like this is the greatest thing she’s ever heard. She wiggles in Javier’s arms until he sets her down. “I love sports! Daddy and Papa just signed me up for soccer.” She shows off the ribbons on her pigtails which, sure enough, have little soccer balls dangling off them. “I’m going to be the goalie!”
Russell’s jaw drops open. “Are you serious? I used to play goalie for my hockey team. It’s the best position.”
“He also gets to go to a lot of games for free,” I say to Cassie, and she looks like she might explode.
“I want to do your job,” she declares. No allegiance, this kid.
“She’s wanted to be a meteorologist for the past year,” I say to Russell as we head into the living room. “You’ve poisoned her.”
“Nothing to poison. I just happen to have a very fun job.”
Alex drops onto the couch with Cassie and Orion on each side of him, who’ve started squabbling about how much money the tooth fairy should leave them. It’s not the same couch we found our mother on the day our dad left, but it’s in the same spot.
“Do you need any help in the kitchen?” I ask my mother.
“I think Javier and I have it covered. It should be ready in ten.” She slides a loose strand of hair back into her bun. I can tell she’s not used to the shorter length yet. “I know it’s not quite sundown,” she says to Russell. “But with the kids, we kind of fudge it. We did the same when Ari and Alex were little. It was impossible to get them to wait.”
“Don’t drag our good names through the mud like that,” Alex says. “We were extremely good children!”
“I have several photo albums that prove otherwise.” My mother brings a hand to her throat. “Ari . . . you still wear that necklace?”
It dawns on me that I wasn’t wearing it at the hospital. Russell had taken it off that night in the hotel, and I wasn’t able to do the clasp myself.
“It’s my favorite necklace,” I say, grazing the lightning bolt with my thumb, and the warmth in her deep brown eyes takes me back to the day I graduated. When she hugged me, pressed the jewelry box into my hand, and told me she couldn’t wait to see me on TV. “Wherever you end up,” she promised, “I’ll eat breakfast or dinner with you every day.” I was still an intern then, hadn’t even locked down a job—but she knew I’d make it.
Somehow, I’d forgotten that.
While we’re waiting, and in part so I can prove to my mother that I can be very patient when it comes to food, thank you very much, I take Russell on a brief tour of the house.
“Unfortunately, she converted it to a guest room a few years ago,” I tell him as I open the door of what used to be my bedroom. “But just imagine some posters of Zac Efron, a star map, and a few more posters of Zac Efron, and you’ll get the idea.”
Meanwhile, Alex’s old room has been turned into an exercise room, a Peloton in one corner and a rack of free weights in the other. For a while, we squabble-joked about whose room got the better upgrade.
“I hope this isn’t too awkward for you. Meeting everyone like this.” I lean against the wall outside Alex’s room. I want Russell to be here, I do, but I can’t let go of what he said at the jazz club. “I just . . . don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”
He settles himself next to me, grazing my arm with a few fingertips. In a perfect world, that light touch would be enough to convince me everything is okay between us. “I’m not. Are you?”
I shrug, because the answer is yes but it’s too complicated to explain all the ways in which I am uncomfortable in this house. “I was kind of hoping we could talk—”
“Dinner’s ready!” my mother calls from downstairs.
“Or eat,” I finish.
“We’ll talk,” he says, giving my hand a quick squeeze, and he must be able to sense my insecurity. “I promise.”
Shabbat dinner wasn’t a weekly tradition for us growing up, but every so often, we’d get out the candles and the good tablecloth. I’ve always loved the prayers over bread and wine, grape juice when we were kids, and as much as I’d have rolled my eyes about it when I was younger, the togetherness. The instant sense of community.
I take a seat between Russell and my mother, Alex and Javier and the twins squeezed onto the other side. There have never been this many people at our table.
As is the custom, my mother waves her hands and then covers her eyes after she lights the Shabbat candles. “Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav vitzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Shabbat,” she recites, and I’m struck with another memory. Alex and me as kids, trying to write out the transliterated Hebrew words, our ridiculous spellings making my mother laugh until tears streamed down her cheeks.
All my memories of the holidays we observed—they were mostly good things. Even if these days, I only make it to temple during the High Holidays, Judaism is an integral part of my identity. My history.
My depression has warped so many of those memories.
“Where do you go to temple, Russell?” my mother asks between bites of lasagna.
“Technically, I don’t,” he admits. “Not regularly. But my daughter’s bat mitzvah is at the end of next month. This is delicious, by the way.”
Javier beams. “Thank you. I tried something new, adding the braised eggplant. We’re always trying to sneak more veggies into the kids’ food.”
Cassie and Orion are oblivious, their mouths already painted red with marinara.
“Have you been to Honeybee Lounge?” Alex asks Russell. “In Capitol Hill? That’s his restaurant.”
“Are you kidding? I love that place.”
Javier brushes this off, but I know he’s pleased, and I can’t deny that I am, too.
My mother assesses Russell with a furrowed brow. “Your daughter’s preparing for her bat mitzvah? You’re . . . very young.”
I stare down at my plate, wincing.
“It doesn’t always feel that way,” he says with a good-natured laugh. He must be used to deflecting.
“No judgment,” she says, and there has to be a limit to the number of times this evening can shock me.
Once I’ve relaxed enough to enjoy myself, something in the living room catches my eye. It’s a woven piece of art hanging above the couch, natural colors with pops of turquoise, and it definitely wasn’t there the last time I was. “Is that new?” I ask, motioning to it with my fork.