The Beautiful Between - Alyssa B. Sheinmel [53]
I wonder what it was like the first time I saw her after my father died. I wonder if she was this quiet. I don’t remember how I found out that he had died—whether she was the one who told me. We walk home quickly, both of us wearing boots that click on the cement. It’s freezing out and the air is cold in my nose, down into my lungs, and out again in smoke before my face. We pass a flower shop. I turn to face my mother. “I want to stop—I could order some flowers to send to the Coles.”
“No, sweetie, don’t send flowers.”
“Why not?” I say meanly. “They’re my friends, even if they never invited you anywhere.”
My mother looks hurt—I only said that because I understand what an invitation from the Coles would have meant to her. Still, she’s patient with me.
“No, honey. Jews just don’t send flowers.”
“Why not?”
“Umm,” she says, looking up, over my head, “I don’t know. It’s the kind of thing you just find out.”
“When?” I ask.
She doesn’t say anything. We walk in silence; now we’re only a block from home. In my head, I am repeating a line: Among the dead, there are so many thousands of the beautiful. I can hear it being said. I can’t remember what it’s from; can’t recognize whose voice is saying it. I’m sure it’s from a book; maybe it was a teacher, saying it in class. The line stays in my head for days, and it will be a long time before I figure out where it’s from.
Among the dead, there are so many thousands of the beautiful. My father is one. And now Kate is one too. Maybe my father will take care of Kate. And then I realize something I never thought of: I don’t know if my father was—or would have been—a good father. I don’t know if he’s someone I want to watch Kate. I am filled with a need to do something, anything, for Kate.
We’re standing across from our apartment house, waiting for the light to change so we can cross the street. My mother looks at my hands: my fingers are cold, and I’m not wearing gloves, and I realize that I left them in the bathroom when I went to rinse my face off. I stuff my hands in my pockets. I ask my mother, “Well, what can I do, or send?”
“We’ll order some food when we get home. Or sometimes they’ll ask for donations to a charity.”
“But how will I know? How will I find out what charity?”
“It’ll be in the obituary,” she says, and begins to walk again.
“But then how do they know that I sent it?” It sounds like I want credit. It’s not that; I just want to do the right thing, whatever it is you’re supposed to do when this happens, and I have no idea what that is.
But my mother does. My mother knows that Jews don’t send flowers and she knows that they will probably ask for a donation instead and she will know exactly what words I should say when I see them at the funeral, the words to put in the condolence card I will send. (And she knows about condolence cards too, the existence of which never occurred to me.) My mother knows all of this. She knows it from experience.
It’s after midnight and I’m waiting for Jeremy. I didn’t stay up this late on New Year’s. I’m not impatient. I know he’ll come. I’m looking, again, at the picture of my parents. My mother is asleep at the other end of the apartment but I’m scared she’ll wake, come in to check on me, see me looking at the picture. I shut my door and sit down against it so that I’m leaning on it, holding it closed.
I wonder why I was so drawn to this picture. There were pictures from their wedding day, pictures with me in them, pictures with my grandparents. Why does this picture mean so much to me?
And then I see it: something I never noticed before. I recognize the chair that they’re sitting on. I recognize it from the house we lived in before my father died. I even remember that the cloth that covered it