The Seder carries on as usual. Mom, who, in every other part of her life, is respectful, assumes the mantle of rebellious teenager. When Grandma reads the part about the Jews wandering through the desert for forty years, Mom cracks it’s because Moses was a man who refused to ask directions. When the talk to turns to Israel, Mom harps on about politics, even though she knows this gets Grandma crazy. When we eat matzo-ball soup, they argue about the cholesterol content of matzo balls.
Dad knows enough to keep quiet. And Phil plays with his hearing aids and dozes in and out of consciousness. I refill my “juice” glass many, many times.
After two hours, we get to the brisket, which means we get to stop talking about Exodus for a while, which is a relief, even if the brisket isn’t. It’s so dry it looks like beef jerky and tastes charred. I move it around my plate, while Grandma chitchats about her bridge club and the cruise she and Phil are taking. Then she asks about our annual summer trip to Rehoboth Beach, which she usually comes up for a portion of.
“What else do you have planned for the summer?” she asks me casually.
It’s a throwaway question, really. Along the lines of how are you? Or what’s new? I’m about to say, “Oh, this and that,” when Mom interrupts to say that I’m working in a lab. Then she tells Grandma all about it. A research lab at a pharmaceutical company. Apparently, I accepted the position just today.
It’s not like I didn’t know she would do this. It’s not like she hasn’t done this my entire life. It’s not like I haven’t let her.
The fury that fills me feels hot and cold, liquid and metal, coating my insides like a second skeleton, one stronger than my own. Maybe this is what allows me to say, “I’m not working in a lab this summer.”
“Well, it’s too late,” Mom snaps back. “I already called Dr. Baumgartner to decline his offer. If you’d had a preference, you had three weeks to make it known.”
“I’m not working at Dr. Baumgartner’s, either.”
“Did you line up something else?” Dad asks.
Mom scoffs, as if that’s unthinkable. And maybe it is. I’ve never had a job. Never had to get one. Never had to do anything for myself. I am helpless. I am a void. A disappointment. My helplessness, my dependency, my passivity, I feel it whorling into a little fiery ball, and I harness that ball, somewhere wondering how something made of weakness can feel so strong. But the ball grows hotter, so hot, the only thing I can do with it is hurl it. At her.
“I don’t think your lab would want me anymore, given that I’ve dropped most of my science courses and am going to drop the rest of them come fall,” I say, spite dripping from my voice. “See, I’m not pre-med anymore. So sorry to disappoint you.”
My sarcasm hangs in the humid air—and then, like a vapor, it floats away as I realize that, for the first time in my life, I’m not sorry to disappoint her. Maybe it’s the spite talking, or maybe Grandma’s secret wine, but I’m almost glad of it. I’m so tired of avoiding the unavoidable, because I feel like I’ve been disappointing her for such a long time.
“You’ve dropped pre-med?” Her voice is quiet, that lethal mix of fury and woundedness that could always take me down like a bullet to the heart.
“That was always your dream, Ellie,” Grandma says, shielding me. She turns to me. “You still haven’t answered my question, Ally. What are you doing this summer?”
Mom is looking so fragile and so angry, and I feel my will starting to break, feel myself starting to give in. But then I hear a voice—my voice—announcing this:
“I’m going back to Paris.”
It comes out, as if the idea were fully formed, something plotted for months, when in fact, it just slipped out, the same way all those admissions to Willem did. But when it does, I feel a thousand pounds lighter, my anger now fully dissipated, replaced by exhilaration flowing through me like sunlight and air.
This is how I felt that day in Paris with Willem. And this is how I know that it’s the right thing to do.
“Also, I’m learning French,” I add. And for some reason, this announcement makes the table erupt into pandemonium. Mom starts screaming at me about lying to her and throwing my whole future away. Dad is yelling about switching majors and who’s going to pay for my exchange program to Paris. Grandma is yelling at Mom for ruining yet another Seder.
So with all the commotion, it’s a little strange that anyone can hear Phil, who has barely said a word since the soup, when he pipes up, “Back to Paris, Ally? I thought Helen said your trip to Paris got canceled because they were striking.” He shakes his head. “They always seem to be striking over there.”
The table goes silent. Phil picks up a piece of matzo and starts munching on it. Mom, Dad, and Grandma all stare at me.
I could so easily cover this up. Phil’s hearing aid was turned down. He heard wrong. I could say that I want to go to Paris because I never made it there on the last trip. I’ve told so many lies. What’s one more?
But I don’t want to lie. I don’t want to cover up. I don’t want to pretend anymore. Because that day with Willem, I may have pretended to be someone named Lulu, but I had never been more honest in my life.
Maybe that’s the thing with liberation. It comes at a price. Forty years wandering through the desert. Or incurring the wrath of two very pissed-off parents.
I take a breath. I brave up.
“Back to Paris,” I say.
Twenty-six
MAY
Home
I make a new list.
Airfare to Paris: $1200
French class at community college: $400
Spending money for two weeks in Europe: $1000.
All together that’s $2,600. That’s how much money I’ll need to save to get to Europe. Mom and Dad are not helping with the trip, obviously, and they’re refusing to let me use any of the money in my savings account, from gifts through the years, because that’s supposed to be for educational purposes, and they’re the trustees on the account, so I can’t argue. Besides, it’s only through Grandma’s intervention, coupled with my threat to go live at Dee’s for the summer that Mom has even agreed to let me live at home. She’s that mad. She’s that mad without even knowing the entire story. I told them I went to Paris. I didn’t tell them why. Or with whom. Or why I need to go back, except that I left something important there—they think it’s the suitcase.
I’m not sure what infuriates her more. Last summer’s deceit or the fact that I won’t tell her everything about it. She refused to speak to me after the Seder and then four weeks went by with barely a word from her. Now that I’m back home for the start of the summer she basically avoids me. Which is both a relief and also kind of scary, because she’s never done anything like this before.
Dee says that twenty-six hundred dollars is a lot for two months, but not impossible. He suggests skipping the French class. But I feel like I need to do that. I’ve always wanted to learn French. And I’m not going back to Paris—not facing down Céline—without it.
So, twenty-six hundred bucks. Doable. If I get a job. But the thing is, I’ve never had a job before. Nothing remotely job-like, beyond babysitting and filing at Dad’s office, which hardly fills the spiffy new résumé that I’ve printed on beautiful card stock. Maybe this explains why, after dropping it off at every business in town with a job opening, I get zero response.
I decide to sell my clock collection. I take them to an antique dealer in Philadelphia. He offers me five hundred bucks for the lot. I’ve easily spent double that on the clocks over the years, but he just looks at me and says that maybe I’ll do better on eBay. But that would take months, and I just want to be rid of them. So I hand over the clocks, except for a Betty Boop one, which I send to Dee.
When Mom finds out what I’ve done, she shakes her head with such profound disgust, like I have just sold my body, not my clocks. The disapproval intensifies. It wafts through the house like a radiation cloud. Nowhere is safe to hide.
I have to get a job. Not just to earn the money but to get out of this house. Escaping to Melanie’s isn’t an option. Number one, we’re not speaking, and number two, she’s at a music program in Maine for the first half of summer—this according to my dad.
“You just gotta keep trying,?? Dee advises when I call him for job advice from our landline. As part of my punishment, my cell phone has been turned off, and the family Internet password protected, so I have to ask them to log me onto the web or else go to the library. “Drop your résumé at every business in town, not just the ones saying they’re hiring, ’cause usually places that are desperate enough to hire someone like you don’t have time to advertise.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“You want a job? Swallow your pride. And drop off a résumé everywhere.”
“Even the car wash?” I joke.
“Yeah. Even the car wash.” Dee isn’t kidding. “And ask to speak to the manager of the car wash and treat him like the King of All Car Washes.”
I imagine myself scrubbing hubcaps. But then I think of Dee, working in a pillow factory this summer or hosing off dishes in the dining hall. He does what he has to do. So the next day, I print out fifty new résumés and just go door to door, from bookstore to sewing shop to grocery store, CPA firm to the liquor store to, yes, the car wash. I don’t just drop my résumé. I ask to speak to managers. Sometimes the managers come out. They ask me about my experience. They ask me how long I want to be employed for. I listen to my own answers: No real job experience to speak of. Two months. I get why nobody’s hiring me.
I’m almost out of résumés when I pass by Café Finlay. It’s a small restaurant on the edge of town, all done up in 1950s décor, with black-and-white-checked floors and a mishmash of Formica tables. Every other time I’ve gone past, it seemed to be closed.
But today music is blasting from inside so loud the windows are vibrating. I push the door, and it nudges open. I shout “hello.” No one replies. The chairs are all stacked up on the tables. There’s a pile of fresh linens on one of the booths. Yesterday’s specials are scrawled on a chalkboard on the wall. Things like halibut with an orange tequila jalapeño beurre blanc with kiwi fruit. Mom calls the food here “eclectic,” her code for weird, which is why we’ve never eaten here. I don’t know anyone who eats here.
“You here with the bread?”
I spin around. There’s a woman, Amazon tall and just as broad, with wild red hair poking out from under a blue bandanna.
“No,” I say.
“Motherfucker!” She shakes her head. “What do you want?” I hold out a résumé. She waves it away. “Ever work in a kitchen?” I shake my head.
“Sorry. No,” she says.
She looks at the Marilyn Monroe wall clock. “I’m going to kill you, Jonas!” She shakes her fist at the door.
I turn to leave, but then I stop. “What’s the bread order?” I ask. “I’ll run and get it for you.”
She glances at the clock again and sighs dramatically. “Grimaldi’s. I need eighteen French baguettes, six loaves of the Harvest. And a couple of day-old brioche. You got that?”
“I think so.”
“Think so’s not gonna butter the bread, honey.”
“Eighteen baguettes. Six loaves of Harvest and a couple of day-old brioche.”
“Make sure it’s stale brioche. Can’t make bread pudding with fresh bread. And ask for Jonas. Tell him it’s for Babs and tell him he can throw in the brioche for free and knock twenty percent off the rest because his damn delivery guy was a no-show again. Also, make sure I don’t get any sourdough. I hate that shit.”
