“So instead I should just lie to her for two months?”
“It’s not lying,” said Esther, weakly.
“What about Gussie? She’ll be an accomplice in this? Or is she just going to be kept from her mother all summer?”
“No, of course not. She’s a smart girl. We’ll explain it.”
“And the staff at the hospital? Surely some of them have already wandered in off the ward to give their condolences?”
“Very few people know. And I’ll speak to Miss McLoughlin first thing in the morning.”
The line fell quiet again. Esther could hear the slow in and out of Isaac’s breathing.
“Isaac, please,” Esther begged. “I’ve lost enough today.”
Still, he didn’t give.
Esther could stand it no longer. She played her final card.
“It would mean so much to Joseph.”
Isaac owed his entire livelihood to Joseph. She knew it, Isaac knew it, and Isaac knew that she knew it. Without Adler’s Bakery and the job Joseph had fashioned for him at the plant, their son-in-law would be nowhere.
“And if I go along with this,” he asked, “what then?”
“After the baby is born, I can tell her.”
When he didn’t respond immediately, she held her breath, frightened she had said the wrong thing.
Finally, he said, “No, I’ll tell her.”
Esther swallowed hard, “That would be fine, too.”
It was the following morning—after her visit with Nellie McLoughlin—before Esther felt she’d fully recovered from her conversation with Isaac. She returned home and made her way through the apartment, preparing the rooms for Shiva. She covered mirrors with sheets and poured out standing water from teakettles, watering cans, and washbasins. Anna tried to be helpful, unfolding and refolding bed linens and offering to drape the mirror above Florence’s dressing table, so that Esther might avoid the room entirely.
Before Esther draped the mirror in her own bedroom, she studied her reflection. Her hair was gray and had been since the girls were small, but for years it hadn’t mattered. Her face had looked young, and inside, she still felt like the nineteen-year-old girl who had once been so bold as to ask Joseph, a handsome young waiter at Chorney’s Hotel, to go for a walk. Joseph and she had married and started the bakery, the girls had been born and grown up, Fannie had married and had Gussie, Florence had gone away to school, and the house had grown quiet again. How often had Esther remarked to Joseph, “I can’t believe I’m old enough to have a married daughter” or “To think I’m a grandmother! How can this be?” Now, as she rubbed her hands against her temples, pulling the puffy skin around her eyes as tight as she could, she felt every one of the forty-nine years that had marched across her face. Esther threw a sheet over the mirror, disgusted with herself. Jews covered their mirrors during Shiva to prevent exactly this kind of shallow reflection.
“Should I lay anything out for the seudat havra’ah?” Anna asked.
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” said Esther. “I told Rabbi Levy I didn’t want him to make any announcements to the congregation. No one will know to cook anything.”
Anna opened her mouth to speak, then seemed to think better of it, and shut it again.
When Esther instructed Anna to keep Gussie at home during the burial, Anna surprised her and pushed back, asking if she might attend instead. Esther hadn’t said a word in response, just looked at her long and hard. The girl had known Florence for, what, less than a week?
“Of course, I’ll stay with Gussie if you prefer,” said Anna, her eyes on the ground.
“Funerals are no place for children,” said Esther.
Rabbi Levy arrived promptly at two, bearing a pair of scissors and a spool of thick, black ribbon. Esther showed him into the living room, where he invited Joseph, Isaac, Anna, and even Gussie to stand. “We’ll perform the Kriah before we leave for the cemetery.”
Nobody argued.
“In the Torah, Jacob tore his robes when he thought his son Joseph was dead,” said the rabbi. “King David and his men did likewise when they heard about the deaths of Saul and Jonathan. Job, who grieved for his children, followed in the same tradition.”
What Esther recalled about the story of Job was that his wife had gone crazy with grief over the loss of those children.
“It’s traditional for children, parents, spouses, and siblings to wear torn clothes during the week of Shiva. Since Fannie cannot participate in this rite, it would be appropriate for Isaac to bear this burden,” he said.
Isaac looked uncomfortable. Esther knew he had only the one jacket.
“Isaac will be back and forth to the hospital, visiting Fannie,” said Esther. “Let’s leave his jacket be.”
“Cut mine, please,” said Joseph, stepping forward.
Rabbi Levy took hold of Joseph’s lapel and cut a deep gouge in the thick fabric. As he did so, he sang, “Boruch ato Adonai Elohenu Melech Ho’olom dayan ha’emet.”
Scissors still in hand, the rabbi moved toward Esther.
“Not my clothes, please,” she said quietly. “I’ll take the ribbon.”
He pursed his lips in judgment but reached into his pocket to remove a small, brass safety pin. As he fastened the ribbon to her blouse, he sang the blessing once more.
Esther could feel Gussie studying her, so she was not surprised when she heard her granddaughter’s small voice: “Please may I have a ribbon, too?”
* * *
They made a small funeral party, Rabbi Levy at the wheel, Joseph beside him, and Esther and Isaac in the backseat of the rabbi’s Pontiac coupe.
The drive to Egg Harbor Township was one that Esther rarely made. Joseph’s trucks made deliveries in Pleasantville, Egg Harbor, and all the way to Cape May, but Esther rarely had reason to cross the Beach Thorofare.
When the car slowed on Black Horse Pike, Esther peered out her window and through the hemlocks that edged Beth Kehillah Cemetery. The property wasn’t large, maybe a dozen acres of land that Egg Harbor’s early Jewish settlers had consecrated when Absecon Island was little more than a railway depot with bathing houses for day-trippers from Philadelphia.
Two cars were parked near the entrance and beside them stood Abe and his son. And Stuart, who held a bouquet of flowers limp by his side, as if he’d purchased them and immediately regretted doing so. Such a goy, bringing flowers to a funeral. She tried to remind herself that he had no way to know.
Rabbi Levy pulled his car up behind Abe’s and cut the ignition. When they were all out, Abe opened the rear door of his own car, and Esther found herself confronted with Florence’s casket. She bit her lip and tasted blood.
“You’ll carry it?” Abe asked the four men. They looked at each other and nodded.
“Not him,” said Esther, pointing to Stuart.
Joseph’s eyes widened.
“What?” she asked in a slightly incredulous tone. “He’s not Jewish.”
“I hardly think it matters now,” Joseph sputtered, but not before Stuart took a large step backward and held up his hands, as if to say, No, of course not.
Neither Joseph nor Rabbi Levy was a young man, and it became obvious to Esther, some minutes later, as she watched them stumble under the weight of Florence’s casket, that Stuart might have been a useful pallbearer. At the graveside, the men lowered the casket onto the pulley system Abe had rigged across the open grave.