to butter their bagels! She’d been looking forward so much to seeing them and she was already disappointed. It made her feel ashamed. She never learned.
Maurice, in stark contrast, which galled her, was a natural with the children, made up nicknames for them (Sport! Freckle-face!), threw them in the air (but not while eating!), tickled them under the table – he called it giving jimjees – teased, wheedled, cajoled, yugged them up until everyone else got cranky.
‘Maurice! Enough already!’
He was delighted when Addie came – Adds, he sometimes called her – was as warm and enveloping as her mother was stiff and retracted, made sure she sat next to him, squeezed her arm as she ate. He found Ben, seated across the table next to Perle – good luck to him! – a little hard to talk to, though they had the state of the nation to discuss and could play pinochle together in the evenings. Ben had learned the game just to be agreeable, but he was not a man’s man, had no interest in baseball, preferred martinis to beer, spent too much time reading. In the daytime, even at the beach, always with a book, or even worse a pad and pencil writing something or other in his minuscule hand – he would never say what.
‘Just a bit of work.’
Addie would scowl. Why wouldn’t he put it away, join in? He was only going to be there for two nights, for God’s sake!
Ben was as stiff with Perle as she with the children, what was there to say? What are you going to cook? What are you knitting? He didn’t know her, had made little effort, and she’d given up with him. And Maurice? He wondered whether his reflexive dislike – no, not dislike but discomfort – in his father-in-law’s presence wasn’t to a degree envy. The old man was so vital, jolly and warm, so engaged with people and things and projects, so delighted by food and drink – every meal was pronounced ‘best I ever ate!’ If he was often full of shit, he was also full of life, and full of stories. His words stuffed the air, all eyes were on him, he was the fulcrum on which the family balanced.
It made Ben feel diminished, and commensurately censorious. Poppa was, it had to be said, but not to anyone in earshot, a bit of a shyster, with his dubious contacts, his nightclubs and hotspots, the regular paper bags of cash that he referred to as sandwiches. God knows where they came from. And he, Ben, profited from them, his children went to private school because of them, and each time he promised himself, he tried to promise himself, he failed to promise himself: This must stop! I am colluding in something shady, probably illegal, am the recipient of a largesse which doesn’t bear looking into. So he didn’t look, and felt diminished and humiliated by his collusion. Ate his sandwiches and felt bilious.
‘Happy enough with the money!’ Maurice always reflected, as Ben – or Addie, it was best left to her – was handed another paper bag.
Maurice soon wilted under the pressure of offsetting the strain of arrival, loaded his plate with egg and onion, some lovely oily black olives, kept his mouth full, which was a way of keeping it shut, and food gradually and blessedly became the centre of attention, which was what it was there for. They had seconds, settled in and began to relax. It was lovely being together, really it was, a brocheh with pickles: a mitzvah!
Only Becca ate fitfully, picking at her food, knowing to put only a little on the plate so that she could join the others in demanding seconds. But she hated Poppa and Granny food from Wolfie’s. It was greasy and it stank, it made your mouth go all funny, it was hard to get down. Chopped liver? Ugh! Nova? Yuck! Even the egg salad was ruined by all those onions. No, she would restrict herself to a toasted bagel – they never remembered she only liked plain ones! – with lots of cream cheese on it. If she’d felt comfortable or confident enough she’d have asked for some jelly to put on it, but she was shy, and no one else thought of it. Jelly on a bagel?
Addie and Ben didn’t mind how little she ate, they didn’t fuss about food, but Granny did.
‘Becca,’ she said, ‘you need to eat.’
‘I am eating, Granny! What do you think I’m doing?’
Perle looked at her, prim and withheld; she was fresh, that’s what she was, she needed to learn how to behave, have some respect. Perle would never have talked to her grandmother like that, would have been ashamed. And punished.
Addie was clenched, a wad of soggy bagel stuck in her throat. She coughed, swallowed, wiped her mouth, wanted to scream. Forty-two days to go.
Sitting opposite, Ben saw the thought pass her face and felt sympathetic, and similarly, only for him the figure was two days. He tried to summon some guilt about his forthcoming release, but felt nothing but relief.
‘Can we leave this, Mother? We go through it every year. She’s a healthy girl, and she eats what she chooses.’
‘Chooses? Chooses, schmoozes, what’s a little one like that know about good eating, and growing up strong and healthy? She needs to eat more, that’s the end of it.’
Jake, listening and watching intently, loaded his plate with everything that Becca hated. He didn’t like most of it either.
Perle beamed at him. Kineahora he should eat like a horse and grow into a man.
‘Can I be excused from the table?’ Becca asked, pushing her plate away.
‘Of course,’ said Addie. ‘Why don’t you unpack your suitcase, put the clothes in the drawers? You remember where they are? Then you can play on the swing.’
There was a silence at the table, as Becca left the room, broken only a few moments later when Perle, recapturing territory, observed, ‘Frankie and Michelle have invited you for coffee tomorrow. Isn’t that nice! I can look after the children while you’re away.’
The silence resumed. Jake looked ruefully at his plate.
2
‘You’re a saint, you know that? Or whatever they call them, a saintess? I don’t know how you do it . . .’ Michelle smiled in response, stacking the plates in the sink, as Frankie finished his coffee at the kitchen table, still talking, distressed.
‘I can hardly bear the thought of it! Trouble, that’s what we’re in for! There’s trouble wherever she goes, trouble in spades . . .’
She dried her hands, walked back to the table, put her arm round his shoulder.
‘Don’t you worry so,’ she said. ‘It’ll be all right. I’m looking forward to it. Addie and I can do things together sometimes, take the kids to the park, go out for an ice cream.’
He laughed because it was so unfunny.
‘The park? An ice cream? My sister? She’d rather clean out the sewers, she hates anything that keeps her away from her films and art and trips to the city to see her crappy friends. Did you ever meet that ghastly, pretentious . . .’
‘Frankie! I’ve met them all!’
‘And they were just as dismissive of you as Addie is: just as rude and superior. God, sometimes I hate that woman!’
‘Don’t, please. It makes it worse for all of us. They’re fine, I don’t need them to like me. I can look after myself. After all, I have everything she wants!’
He looked puzzled.
‘What?
