Love Is a Rebellious Bird Page 3

  “Mom,” Phillip said, “I can cut up some lettuce.”

  Jeffrey broke in, “This is fine, Mom. Fine. You know I hate vegetables. Don’t worry about it.”

  Phillip tried to finish his idea. “You want me to go to the kitchen and cut some lettuce?”

  You reached for the breadbasket and, stuffing a roll into your mouth, mumbled, “Good rolls, Mom. Like the rolls a lot.”

  “Oh, Elliot,” your mother answered tiredly. “Don’t talk with your mouth full. They’re just packaged rolls from the supermarket. And nearly burned at that.”

  “Well, I like potatoes, Mrs. Pine,” I said cheerfully. “I wish my mom made potatoes more often,” I said, digging a big forkful from my plate.

  “Call me Helen, dear,” your mom said, and stood up, smoothing back her hair. You had your mother’s dark, shiny hair. She wore it long, unlike most of the other mothers, including my own, who had their hair cut short, then set in curlers once a week at the beauty parlor. They wrapped their heads in toilet paper at night, so that the lacquered helmets wouldn’t get mussed. Your mother’s hair fell to her shoulders, but it was parted severely in the center and pulled tightly back behind her ears with bobby pins. Her hair might have been pretty, had it been loose around her face, but the bobby pins flattened it, pulling the skin taut at the sides of her face. She was such a tall, angular woman, her elbows and clavicle prominent, the skin stretched tight over them as well.

  Standing stiffly behind her chair, your mother gave me another of her small, shy smiles. “You’re a lovely girl. I’ve enjoyed having a girl at the table, Judith. All these booming male voices every night. It tires me. They’re quite loud, aren’t they?” She untied the apron from around her waist and placed it over the back of her chair. “Now don’t you get stuck doing the dishes, dear. Just leave them in the kitchen. I’m going to lie down for a little bit. I like to do the dishes later, when I can’t sleep. It gives me something to do. I’ll be very angry if I see you’ve done those dishes, Judith. You and Elliot just work on the posters tonight. That’s what’s important.”

  She left the dining room, and you followed her with your eyes as she shuffled soundlessly down the hallway in her slippers. We heard the bedroom door open and shut. At the table, everyone was quiet. The only sounds were our knives and forks clinking against the china.

  Slowly, you and your brothers wound up the conversation again. You spoke about Chicago’s mayor, Richard Daley, politics of one sort or another always being a prime topic in your family.

  “Do you think Dick Daley can be re-elected?” Jeffrey asked, wiping his mouth after taking a long drink of water. “Despite all the scandals?”

  “Sure,” Phillip answered. “The Democratic machine still has plenty more good years left in it. Scandals don’t hurt Daley.”

  Then your father spoke, interrupting his sons. “It’s good that she gets reminded about the greens,” he said gruffly. “You boys need a balanced diet, with all you do. Those treatments of hers, they played hell with her memory this time. She specifically told me she wants to be reminded when she forgets things.” He placed his large hands on either side of his empty plate, clenching the edge of the table tightly.

  “I’ll make a list for her,” burly Phillip said softly. “I’ll write everything she has to do for dinner on a paper and I’ll stick it up on the refrigerator.”

  We finished eating. You were the first to stand and you began to clear the table. There was a swinging door from the dining room into the kitchen, and when you went through it, the door swung shut behind you. Then we heard a long whistle. “Will you have a look at this,” you called and came back out through the swinging door, carefully carrying a beautiful pie with both your hands. You set it down right in front of your father. We all stared at it, the perfection of the strands of dough on the top crust woven over and under one another, the juice oozing lushly through the lattice.

  “Peach,” your father said, after he leaned over to smell it. He pursed his lips. “She knows it’s our favorite. You like peach, Judy?” he asked me.

  I saw your mother just once more while we were in high school. It was a couple of months later, the following January. Not surprisingly, you had won your election, making a thrilling speech about supporting the young State of Israel, inspiring everyone who listened. Your voice, even then, was mellifluous and there was not a sound when you spoke, even in a room full of antsy teenagers. At sixteen, you became the Midwest Regional president of American Zionist Youth. Still a boy, you wore a suit and tie and got on planes to far-off places like Kansas City and Omaha, Nebraska. You even carried a briefcase, for God’s sake. You attended national conferences and conventions and eventually were appointed the youth delegate for some prominent adult Jewish organizations. High school must have seemed tame on Monday morning for a kid who’d been treated like a celebrity on the previous weekend. You were like a rock star for Jewish girls in ten states. Handsome and charming, you could work a room with remarkable aplomb; and you had that hair that you tossed off your forehead or raked your fingers through casually. You remembered the name of every person you met during that year when you were regional president, and would speak that person’s name while looking them in the eye, a remarkable quality for a teenager and one you later found useful in your illustrious law career.

  A few weeks after the election, your parents threw a victory party. The apartment was packed with teenagers, parents, and local Jewish leaders. Everyone took off their winter coats and piled them on top of the bed in your parents’ room. After I unzipped my own bulky parka, I stood in front of the oval mirror above your parents’ maple dresser. I didn’t see how I was going to face this party. Yesterday, my skin had betrayed me. There was a red circle, about the size of a half dollar, extending from my cheek to lower jaw. I wondered if people might think it was a hickey; Rochelle had once come to school with a hickey on her neck and no one seemed to think any less of her. She was nonchalant about the evidence of her passion, proud of this proof of your ardor, not even bothering to cover it with makeup or to pull up her collar.

  But my mark was not a hickey. On the contrary, it was the disgusting symptom of a fungal infection and just a bit too high on my neck to cover with a collar. I’d been babysitting children who had a cat. The cat was one of those creepy felines that slinks up and rubs against you if you stay still. After I put the kids to bed, the cat pushed itself under my palm, trying to get me to pet it, desperate for human touch. I was watching television and nodding off when I’d felt the cat nuzzle up against my face and neck. Ugh. The cat had ringworm, which left behind an angry, itchy circle. I was enormously lucky, the dermatologist said. If the ringworm had been on my scalp, I’d have had to shave my head in order to treat it. Why me? Stuck with this stigmata and I didn’t even like cats.

  I walked down the hallway to the kitchen, the ringworm side of my face to the wall. There was your mother, pouring water into an industrial-sized coffee percolator. She swung around, her sad eyes suddenly brightening. She seemed enormously pleased to see me, as if all evening she’d been waiting for me to arrive.

  “Judith, I’m so glad you came. I was just thinking about you. I don’t think Elliot could have won without you. You must be the hardest-working girl in the entire organization. Come here and let me hug you. I’m so proud of all you did to get him elected.”

  “Be careful, Mrs. Pine,” I said and pointed to my cheek. I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Ringworm. It might be contagious. I’m not sure. Doesn’t it look awful?” I asked. “I feel like a leper.”

  “Oh, you poor girl,” she said. “It must itch. But Judith, I didn’t even notice it. That sweater you’re wearing. It’s a perfect green with your dark hair. Apple green, I’d call it. That’s all I see—how lovely you’re looking tonight in that nice sweater. I didn’t see the ringworm at all.” She enveloped me in a warm hug.

  My own mother had flinched when she’d seen me go out the door that night. “Are you sure you ought to be goin
g out in public with that thing on your face?” she’d asked.

  Your mother made me feel better and we stayed together in the kitchen all that night. It was warm and smelled deliciously of coffee and rugelach and brownies. She made the night tolerable. I know you mentioned me when you gave your thank-you speech. I heard you call my name, but I didn’t leave the kitchen and walk through the swinging door. Mrs. Pine glanced over at me, but I shrugged my shoulders. She nodded and went back to scraping and washing dessert plates. I dried, then put them away in the cabinets. The two of us kept a nice rhythm going. After the plates were done, we took a break and she poured me a mug of steaming coffee and I added cream and two heaping spoonsful of sugar. Side by side, we leaned against the counter and ate the flaky rugelach which we held over napkins, speaking comfortably to each other. At ten o’clock, when I could hear the party breaking up, I went into the Pines’ bedroom and extracted my parka with its fur-lined hood from the rest of the coats piled on the bed. I pulled the zipper all the way to the top, so that it covered my neck and part of my face when I said my goodbyes. You were off in a corner, talking to some important-looking men with yarmulkes on their heads.

  Later that year, several of us from youth group were asked to be counselors at the big Jewish camp near Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. The camp was called Avodah, the Hebrew word for work, indicating that the camp was like a workers’ collective in Israel; we weren’t actually supposed to be having fun. Instead, we were to be serious of purpose and to sweat and create like settlers in Israel were doing.

  To my surprise, that summer I discovered I loved the outdoors. My parents had done little to show me the joys of nature; never once had I been camping. You couldn’t blame them; their own immigrant lives had been full of such threat and insecurity that staying in the city seemed safer, more predictable to them. Who knew what lurked in the woods of America? Russia’s woods had been dangerous enough, and there they knew their enemies: wolves, Cossacks, and anti-Semites.

  By then, Rochelle was tiring of youth group and hadn’t gone off to summer camp with the rest of us. She was starting to meet college boys through her older sister, and had begun a job at a steak house in downtown Chicago. (Here I would like it noted that another of my mother’s prophesies has come true: back then when I bemoaned my own lack of breasts, she’d tried to reassure me by saying, “You’ll see. Those girls with their big chests and movie star looks, they’ll burn out early.” My dear, annoying mother was, as usual, right. At our recent high school reunion, I saw Rochelle. Her skin was leathery and tough, that of a lifelong smoker; and her breasts, though still impressively large, sagged, no longer possessing the perky upward tilt of her youth. I apologize, Elliot, for I am not proud of my lack of charity on the issue of Rochelle, but it was reassuring to see that the years have spared none of us, not even Rochelle.)

  That August at Camp Avodah, I was seventeen, and after we got off the bus from Chicago, I blissfully found myself assigned to a cabin in a lush pine forest. I’d had no idea that nature could make me so happy. I gazed up at the vast Wisconsin sky. The blanket of stars overhead was a miraculous new invention to me. After I’d gotten my campers settled that first night, I pulled on a sweatshirt and headed back outside. There was an all-staff meeting scheduled for ten thirty that night. Junior counselors had been assigned to patrol the cabins in shifts, making sure the children were safe and asleep. Everyone else was to report to the meeting with the camp director. You and I met on the way to the dining hall.

  “How’s your group?” you asked, waiting for me to join you on the path.

  “Sweet girls. Eight-year-olds, most away from home for the first time. A few sniffles, but I think they’re going to be okay. I love it here, Elliot,” I added.

  “Me too. It’s cool that you came this summer. Avodah is my favorite spot anywhere. I count down the months until it’s time to come back. Can you believe all this?” you asked, and waved your arm across the night sky I’d just been staring at with wonder. You and the sky made me breathless. “Come with me, I want to show you something.” You fished a small flashlight from your back pocket and shined it on the ground in front of us, then ducked and took my hand, guiding me into the thick trees. There was a pillow of pine needles under our feet. We sat on the soft ground and you turned off the flashlight. Above us, there was an opening in the trees, a window. I looked up, marveling at the stars, more than I had ever before seen.

  There, among the fragrant pines of the Wisconsin woods, you kissed me for the first time, putting your hand under my head as we lay on the soft earth. Our kisses became deeper and longer. The little opening in the woods became the whole world and nothing besides that spot existed for me. For how many years had I imagined kissing you like this? I’d listened to Rochelle describe your embraces, then dreamed it was me. Only this was better than I’d imagined. We were in a place of beauty that I’d not known existed until this very day and I was enveloped in your arms. I stopped thinking about the time, or the meeting, or anything else besides your lips and the moist, humid air surrounding us, laced with its ever-present piney smell. You slid your hands under my shirt, cupping my breasts gently, and I felt myself lean into your hands. Then, abruptly, you stopped, sat up, and shined your flashlight onto the face of your watch. I covered my eyes, the light from even that small beam shocking me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “We’ve got to go,” you said urgently. “Right now. Leonard hates it when anyone shows up late for staff meeting. He goes apeshit when people walk in after he’s started.” You reached down and pulled me from the ground. We hurriedly rearranged our clothes, brushing off our jeans, and then you took my hand and we ran toward the cafeteria. It was the only building in the campground ablaze with lights, and these lights muted the star-filled sky.

  Two important things marked our late entrance to the meeting. First, you and I established on that first night of camp that we’d become a couple. The other girls’ eyes met and brows were raised. It was a formal announcement of our new status. By entering that dining hall late and together, with a few stray leaves stuck to our sweatshirts, news of our romance was broadcast loud and clear. I floated into the meeting, cruelly ignoring poor Jordan, my clueless accordion player boyfriend, who’d been saving a spot for me beside him.

  The second occurrence that marked that night was that I did arouse the anger of Leonard Chover, the camp’s director. Leonard was probably a decade older than the rest of us and was a real stickler for rules. He was a doctoral student at the University of Chicago. When he wasn’t at camp, he was doing research at the Orthogenic School in Hyde Park. This esteemed school, led by the famous German child psychiatrist, Bruno Bettelheim, treated children with severe emotional needs. Leonard, himself, wanted to work with emotionally disturbed children when he became Dr. Chover. That night, he marked me as a troublemaker, someone he’d have to keep an eye on.

  “I believe I called this meeting for ten thirty,” Leonard said and squinted at me sternly under his thick, bushy eyebrows. “Was there some difficulty in your cabin? What did you say your name was?” I felt his disapproval directed solely toward me. You, Elliot, obviously, had special status with Leonard.

  “Judith Sherman. Everybody in my cabin is fine. I have the eight-year-olds. A little homesickness, but it all seems normal.” Every set of eyes was upon me. I shrugged and sat on the floor, trying to disappear into the crowd.

  “You’ve already missed a lot of information, Judith. It’s Elliot’s third summer here. He knows the rules, the routine. But I hope your lateness is not an indication of a casual attitude. I insist that my staff take its work with children very seriously. We have a huge responsibility and I don’t tolerate casual attitudes. I also don’t consider homesickness to be at all trivial. Everything that happens to these children can be cause for later trauma.”

  At that, I choked back a laugh, but then saw a small frown on your face. Fortunately, Leonard had turned from me and continued his lecture, speaking on and on ab
out abandonment and childhood separation issues. Attachment disorders and other crap like that. Almost every night, he got us together in the cafeteria, asking us to “process” (that was his favorite word) the children’s interactions of that day. He talked about our suburban Jewish campers as if they were the fragile and emotionally wounded kids he worked with at the Orthogenic School. This psychological jargon was completely new to me and made no sense. I sat on the floor with the other counselors, ready to scream, desperate for Leonard to release us back into the beautiful evening, staring at the big dining hall clock and wondering how much time you and I could steal under the trees before we had to rush back to our cabins and the children.

  One night, as Leonard was analyzing whether little Rosalyn Goldstein, a dramatic twelve-year-old from Highland Park, was really making a veiled suicide attempt when she refused to swim back to shore from the deep part of the lake, I caught you glancing in my direction. I rolled my eyes, sure you agreed with me about Leonard’s tediousness.

  When we were released, I pushed open one of the screen doors to leave the dining hall and muttered to you, “God, I can’t believe how long he talked tonight. Leonard goes later and later each meeting. And he’s so serious all the time. This is summer camp, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know, Rocky. Leonard can teach us things. Don’t forget, he knows a lot about kids. We have to be sensitive to their issues. You know, being away from home, some of them for the first time.”

  I looked up at you with surprise. “I guess. But now it’s midnight and you and I haven’t had a minute together in two days. I just wish we had more time together,” I said. “I never see you.” I heard my voice. I was whining. How quickly we’d gotten to this—me asking for more than you were willing to give. Your lips tightened. I saw your displeasure.

  You rubbed your eyes. “Believe me, I’m tired, too, Judith. And I still have to finish the program for Friday night’s service before I can turn in.” To my dismay, you picked up your pace and joined a group of counselors who were walking ahead of us and laughing at something, leaving me behind. You didn’t wait for me and walk me back to my cabin, as you usually did. The precious moments I had become accustomed to at the end of the day, when you pushed me up against a tree and we kissed feverishly, would not happen that night. I watched you go farther up the path with the others, then I noticed Jordan. His eyes also followed the laughing group before he turned to me with a look of commiseration.