journal | team | miscellany | podcast | home

Shiva

Joanne Naiman

Cara Rosen did everything wrong as a widow, starting with throwing a tantum while she sat Shiva. She’d been a good mother and wife; she’d loved those expected roles. But she hadn’t been prepared at fifty-seven to be left without a husband.

Mark, Cara’s Husband, dropped dead of a massive heart attack on July 1 2015; just a week before the couple were to leave for Paris to celebrate their thirtieth anniversary.  The Rosens, of course, had planned for death: prepaid burial plots, enough government bonds so their daughter, Lila, would never worry about money. Yet, it was tacitly understood that death wouldn’t touch either of them until the proper time.

Even in grief, Cara was a doer; she organized her own Shiva down to the last deli sandwiches, none of which she planned to eat. Like most girls growing up in a wealthy Long Island suburb, she’d been taught to eat more with her eyes than her mouth. Somewhere in the middle of grieving, she’d managed to tuck in a trip to her beauty salon to get the usual: Bar Mitzvah Hair; blown straight and curled under with a big round brush.

Sitting Shiva, Cara was overwhelmed immediately; too many distant relatives. She couldn’t stand their sympathy; they expected her gratitude just for showing up.

“The emergency EMTs didn’t get to him in time?” Dianna asked. She was a stuck-up second-cousin who sent customized Hanukah cards every year with a list of her family’s accomplishments: “David declared as a premed!” Cara couldn’t bear the horror of ever getting one of those cards again.

“Yes, they got there in time. Mark lived. But I decided to sit Shiva anyway!” Cara yelled. She ran into the bathroom crying.

She barely heard the knock on the door. Lila.

Her daughter hugged her until she stopped shaking and sat her down on the toilet. “I screamed. At company!”

“You’re entitled to foam a little at the mouth sitting Shiva,” Lila said.

“I’m so sorry pussycat.” Mark used to call Lila that when she was little.  Absentmindedly, Cara reached up and pushed a lock of her daughter’s hair behind her ear. Her child had lost her father.

“Mom, let me stay at least another week.”

“No. You have Daniel waiting in California.”  Everyone agreed he was as nice as Mark. At twenty-six, Cara’s daughter looked like a young clone of her. Slim; eyes pretty enough to be a conversation piece (bright green with long lashes.)  But Cara thought her daughter was much lovelier. Mark would never get a chance to see her turn twenty-seven.

Cara’s whole life had passed away with Mark. Her sense of safety disappeared; she’d always felt protected, loved, as soon as she heard the sound of Mark’s key in the apartment door.

Only a few weeks after the funeral, she resumed her job, but quit the next day. For over two decades, Cara had been a freelance copy-editor in the couple’s rambling Upper West Side Manhattan apartment. But her exuberance for her work disappeared overnight; gone that jolt of satisfaction Cara felt while perfecting grammar, with its ability to order the world using only punctuation and syntax.

Cara let her friends drift away. Most days she preferred to grieve alone. On a rare occasion, she’d lunch with a close girlfriend. She turned down dinner invitations. She felt like a creature cleaved in half; the remains of what had once been a couple.

Weekend mornings were the worst. She and Mark used to linger in bed. That last Saturday, she woke first; slipped off her nightgown, slid on top of Mark. She felt his body stir. Half asleep, he stroked her and whispered: “There you are.”

▪

CARA TRIED TO SLOWLY cobble together a life over the next year.  She joined a widow’s bereavement group that met at a nearby synagogue; it had been decades since she’d stepped inside one.  She and Mark had been raised the same. It didn’t take prayer to be Jewish.  It took remembrance:  Remember yours are a great people. Remember yours are a people who will always know hatred.  

Remember your dead. Dead: Cara’s parents, grandparents and now Mark.

Cara liked the meetings; there were nostalgic kid snacks; once a week, she allowed herself to be comforted by jelly donuts, black-and-white cookies, Mallomars. She wasn’t forced to say anything; she just closed her eyes and listened. Other widows spoke the words in her head.

They too saw men they mistook for their dead husbands. They too had those bottomless moments when they couldn’t crawl out from under the grief; a dog still waited by the door every night at 6 PM; a baby still looked around and said DaDa. The sorrow and pity of food shopping. Like Cara, other widows who filled up their grocery carts; more groceries now than before their husbands’ deaths. Like Cara, they too wanted strangers to believe they had someone at home waiting.

There was such survivors’ shame in being left behind. Such searing loneliness. A divorced woman might feel abandoned, unloved by a husband; but a widow feels abandoned, unloved by God.

Cara began lunching with more friends. Almost all suggested it was time to get out there.  Which, of course, meant men. Cara recognized her loneliness. But who would even want her? She’d once been proud of her looks. But Mark’s death had taken its toll. She wasn’t ready to gauge how much a fifty-eight-year-old  widow was were worth on the open market.  And would she ever find a man as worthy as  Mark?

July 2016,  an entire year after Mark’s death, Cara was finally able to step foot in Bagel Bossy again. She and Mark used to go there every Sunday.

Bob, the owner gave her a big welcome: “I have that well-done poppy seed your hubby loves. How is he?”

“Dead,” Cara said.

 Bob stared at her; then stuttered: “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

How could you?” Cara forced herself not to run out; she ordered her usual: a plain bagel with no-fat cream cheese. She sat in the back where it was quiet, in that dark dingy booth she and Mark had always avoided.

She thought she recognized the man at the next table; his thick white hair slicked back; long, legs; chin dimpled. Probably in his early sixties. A friend of a friend no doubt.

She didn’t want to be rude.  “Hello, how are you?” The man looked startled. She blushed; they didn’t know each other. But she’d seen that man before, filed away his handsome face in some primitive part of her brain that had always remained unmarried, desirous.

 I’m sorry,” Cara said, then went blank. She reached across to the man’s table and stuck out her hand. “Cara Rosen.”

He shook the hand: “Brian Bauer. You can call me Mr. Bauer, or even Brian,” he said and laughed.

He picked up his coffee cup, and iPad and pointed with his chin to a chair next to Cara’s. “All right?”

She shrugged yes. While Brian moved over, Cara stared at her bagel.  She was in danger of taking a bite and getting cream cheese all over her lips. She sat on her hands and was silent; high school had been like that.

He plopped the iPad on the table. “I’m having a lousy time drawing a human colon.”

“Doesn’t everyone?” Cara said. Brian laughed again.  It turned out Brian Bauer was a graphic artist, which Cara translated as the best kind of artist; one who made a living.

For their first date, Cara suggested a small Italian restaurant; out of the way. She wore a black sheath dress; perhaps a bit too somber and dressy. It hung on her thin frame (she’d lost weight since Mark’s death, despite the jelly donuts.) Her Bar Mitzvah hair bounced against her back. She’d taken off her wedding ring; then slid it right back on, before she finally took it off again.  A widow is neither fish nor fowl; single, yet still married.

Brian walked in; hands in the pockets of his white painter’s pants; his crisp blue cotton shirt ignited his blue eyes.  Cara was shy. Afraid and in awe. She knew cool when she saw it.  Brian must have been one of those kids she’d secretly admired from a distance when she was growing up.  A hippie, a bad boy with a van, which featured a mattress. Cara had forgotten that before she met Mark, she’d envied the confident lithe co-eds who visited the back of vans owned by boys like Brian.

Cara asked him where he grew up; she hoped they had friends in common or at least friends of friends. (Always her icebreaker: Jewish geography.)

“Great Neck! Small world!” Cara said. “I  lived in the town next to you! Manhasset Hills.”

“Very small,” Brian said. “All our parents considered themselves assimilated Jews; even though they settled us in Long Island shtetels.”

“Christmas time, my parents threw me in the back of the car, and we’d ride around to find the houses with the Christmas lights. It was like a treasure hunt.”

 “Not us,” Brian said. “I was a Red diaper baby.”

 “A red diaper? Baby?” Cara asked. She wasn’t sure she had heard right.

“You know; the kids of Communists.”

“Your parents were communists! And you lived in fancy Great Neck! Were communists even allowed to have wall-to-wall carpeting?”

Brian laughed and said:  “Not card-carrying commies, more Bolshevik-lite. My father had a practical view of communism. He wanted everyone to be rich.  A Caddie in every driveway. My mother was more serious. She was always handing out leaflets to ban the bomb and demonstrating. Do you know what Tikkum Olam means? To her, that was the most important part of being a Jew.”

“It sounds like an Indian entrée.”

Brian laughed, then said, “It’s Hebrew. It means: Repairing the World. That’s what we’re supposed to do. Make a difference. My mother believed that. I guess it rubbed off.”

Cara pictured her own mother organizing her S&H stamps, marching up and down the  aisles of the A&P.  She wasn’t going to tell Brian that her mother was proud to be a rich housewife. That her father had bought the afternoon paper only to check the stock market closing. That she’d  grown up without politics. She and Mark had barely read past the newspaper headlines.

“But you’re for Hilary Clinton right?”

“Isn’t everybody?” Cara meant it, but she didn’t mention she and Mark sometimes didn’t get around to voting.

For the next few minutes, Brian went on a rant that boiled down to the country was fucked if Trump was elected. Cara nodded her head a lot and a few times threw in an “Absolutely.” She enjoyed Brian’s passion. She allowed herself to wonder, very briefly, if he’d bring that passion to bed.

The rest of the date was easy, fun. She kept Brian laughing. It had been that way with Mark. She always heard women say they liked when men made them laugh. Cara was the opposite; she wanted a man who was a good audience. It was only after she’d tucked herself safely under the covers that Cara noted with relief there was no goodnight kiss.

They soon spent a lot of time together. Long evenings they’d shared too much wine. And their grief.  It turned out Brian had gone through a divorce only six months before they met; it had left him feeling “ripped apart.”

Cara was at Brian’s apartment for the first time when she told him the story of Mark’s death. Brian lived only blocks away. She sat cross-legged, comfortable on what she would have called a high-end couch. A glass of a full-bodied red wine in her hand. She felt at home. Brian had the familiar mild pretensions of all the New Yorkers she loved: no television in the living room; a thick all-wool area rug; a bookcase devoted not just to tons of books, but plants, pictures and a small oil painting.

“He died at the office,” Cara blurted out. She blushed with shame that she hadn’t spent the last moments of  her husband’s life with him. But there was so much secret everyday shame.   Even when she sat in the park on that first beautiful spring day: shame, because Mark no longer had spring.

“His partner, George, called and told me.” Cara had always liked George, but she screamed that he was an idiot and a liar. She hung up and waited for Mark to come home. George rang the bell. Cara collapsed on the other side of the door and wouldn’t let him in. As long as she prevented George from crossing her threshold, Mark was still alive and working.

“Death doesn’t just make you sad, it makes you batshit crazy,” Cara said. Only then did she realize that while she’d talked, Brian had put his arm around her shoulder. She allowed herself to lean against him.

On their fifth date, Brian told her: “I’m the one who wanted the divorce, but it still feels like a death. Sorry! I shouldn’t have said that!”

Cara had drunk enough wine to feel free, floaty. She put her hand on Brian’s arm; it was thin and muscular; not too big, not too small. Just right. For the first time, she was able to glimpse her grief as finite; or at least mutable, manageable. She meant to kiss Brian lightly. But her body betrayed her. Her tongue unexpectedly slipped inside his mouth; her lips lingered and sucked.

She pulled away from Brian, from her own lust. She asked if they could go slow.

“Lady’s choice,” he said. She was relieved that he sounded so sincere.  

Cara had to fake it when it came to Brian’s causes.  She didn’t want to let on that they were mostly a mystery to her. “Black Lives Matter.” She nodded vigorously, pretended she understood.  She’d known enough to squelch her immediate reaction: “Of course black lives matter. Hadn’t she and Mark voted for Obama; twice?”

But Cara understood Skokie; she understood the 2006 Seattle Jewish Federation shooting; the 2009 D.C. Holocaust Museum shooting; the 2014 Overland Park shooting. Scratch any Jew, her father always said, and you find a fear of antisemitism just below the surface; a whole people who have been holding their breath through the ages.  

Sometimes getting ready for an evening with Brian, Cara would feel she made an awful mistake. There was a nagging sense that Mark might have considered Brian a hypocrite. A rich old hippie; with his prized Prius, organic fruits and vegetables and religious recycling. His dedication to protesting: “An activist as long as it doesn’t interfere with a big 401K.” Most nights, though, Cara thought it must be wonderful to be Brian; to feel that what you did every day was so important you could  actually help make or break the earth.

“I have my Su Casa Reunion next month,” Brian said one night. He had told Cara the story of  his Su Casa crowd several times. It’d always made her laugh and feel envious. A dozen or so of Brian’s closest friends first met in a big grassy field some forty years before, on their way home from Woodstock.

The highway had been so clogged, a bunch of  kids pitched tents to spend the night in a rundown upstate town called Greensburg. They survived for days like mellow Maccabees, on psychedelics, Scooter Pies, Fresca, Wild Turkey and the only wine left untouched at the music festival; a bottle of Manishewitz some kid had stolen from his parents.

When someone slobbered Mi Casa, Su Casa, everyone chanted Su Casa, Su Casa, and their name was born. That same group, more or less, met every year for a reunion at the hotel right across from the field where they’d first pitched their tents.

“Can I come?” Cara asked. It had slipped out. The wine had worked its charms; she felt floaty and bold. She wanted to meet this Su Casa crowd; to pretend she’d belonged to a group who’d known each other in their twenties, when they were beautiful: tanned, naked.  Part of the Woodstock Nation. Peace and Love. They’d helped stop Vietnam! Cara was a timid preadolescent at the time; but she had planned to grow up to become a sexy hippie.

Besides with all the therapy and self-help books Cara consulted after Mark’s death, one person gave the best advice. Cara had a postit on her refrigerator door. Do one thing every day that scares you. Eleanor Roosevelt.

Brian nodded and hesitated: “One room or two?”

Cara touched her naked wedding ring finger. Hadn’t she realized she’d just asked Brian to take her away for the weekend? “You decide.”

“Sorry. Always: Lady’s choice.”

“One room,” Cara said, “But I can’t guarantee room service.”                                             

                                                                 ▪

OCTOBER 20, 2016. Cara had been a widow for one year and three months. Brian was due to pick her up in thirty minutes. She hadn’t started to get ready. She hesitated, then reached deep into her closet for her suitcase. There it was, untouched by death. The tag: The Rosens, 20 Riverside Drive, NYC. She cut off the tag and crammed it into the back of a kitchen drawer. 

Slowly, Cara began to pack. She was about to embark on her first weekend away in over thirty years with a man who wasn’t her husband.  She looked at the mound of clothes in the suitcase. There was an abyss where Mark’s once belonged.  Who’d believe she could so badly miss a pile of khaki pants, polo shirts and bleached white jockey shorts? She wondered who walked around now wearing the clothes of Mark’s that she’d donated. Thank God they were generic enough that she’d be hard pressed to recognize one of his shirts on another man.

Cara hadn’t expected to feel this guilty going away with Brian. She’d spoken to Lila the night before to get her permission. Her daughter had teased her; “It’s okay with me, as long as you keep curfew.”

In the past year their roles had reversed. Lila had fussed over her mother as if she were the parent, had done a paid Google search on Brian before Cara’s first date. But Cara couldn’t ask Lila the real question – was she being disloyal to Mark going away for the weekend with another man. Only Mark could tell her. Cara called their home phone for the umpteenth time that day.

“Hi it’s us!” Her husband’s voice so clear on the message she’d never changed; it seemed impossible that voice came from a dead man.

Brian had mentioned weekend activities included hiking hilly trails.  And it was supposed to rain!  From the way Brian described the Su Casa crowd, they would probably plow ahead despite the weather.

Cara pulled her Pradas out of the suitcase (and substituted her Keds). The Pradas were her prized city sneakers; their ability to rebound from a muddy, depressed countryside was at least one dark unknown she could eliminate from the weekend.

Brian had apologized in advance for the hotel: bare bones. She’d joked: “Bare and bones should never describe a place where people stay overnight.” Now it wasn’t funny. She wasn’t ready to slum it for weekend; especially with strangers.

She was determined not to think about sex; Sex. Sex! Why had she agreed to share a room with Brian? She told herself that if it didn’t feel right, she’d just say no. At the same time, she stuffed see-through baby-dolls into the side of her suitcase.

Brian buzzed the intercom to signal he’d arrived. He’d wait in his car for Cara.  She decided to pull out her black oversized pocketbook with its crackled leather; its heft, even empty, so familiar; the musty scent; the sharp snap of its clasp. She filled it with a wool hat with ear-flaps, Benadryl, a corkscrew, a magnifying glass, a tiny telescope to sight birds and two sealed sleeves of Social Tea cookies.  She clutched the bag as she walked out the door for the weekend; it held the necessities she’d taken on her last holiday with Mark.

Last minute, Cara dropped her wedding ring into the zipped portion of her bag, next to the Benadryl.

When Cara got in the car, Brian leaned over and kissed her on both cheeks. It was a more European than erotic. Cara was grateful; it was Brian’s way of letting her know everything was up to her.

They were silent at first while he drove.  Cara looked out at the pristine Palisades Parkway. The foliage was heavy with fall: leaves burnt orange, fiery red, golden; dazzling and ready to perish. Early in their marriage, Cara and Mark had a mutt, Max. Cara remembered his head out the car window, ears blowing back catching the wind; his wet nose; the way his paw tapped a demand when anyone slacked off petting. Max was the first death Cara and Mark ever shared; they were only twenty-five; both so stunned they could barely comfort each other. Cara secretly blamed Mark for Max’s death. Not because he could have prevented it, but because he was never supposed to let anything so terrible happen to them.

“When Jon and Rebecca were still tiny and fell asleep in the car,” Brian said, talking about his now grown children, “Maggie and I took turns looking at them in the rearview mirror.

We thought we’d figured out how to be happy. All we had to do was watch over our kids, and the rest would be easy.”

“Why did we all think that?” Cara asked.

“We didn’t have a clue how messy life gets,” Brian said and shrugged.

“Will people be expecting Maggie?” Cara asked. A new panic.

“She’d refused to go to reunions years ago,” Brian said. They were silent again. He fumbled in the glove compartment and grabbed a CD. The car flooded with Crosby, Stills & Nash’s Wooden Ships. If you smile at me I will understand.

Brian started to sing; he had a lovely deep voice. Cara hesitated, then joined in.  She marveled she knew all the words. She’d memorized them when she was a young teenager, a lonely only child, holed up in her bedroom, who played moody rock songs, over and over. They tapped into her inchoate longing to do big things, important things, when she grew up: Join the Peace Corp; argue for women’s rights before the Supreme Court; star on Broadway.

The lyrics had been locked away, forgotten, during her marriage. One of the most impressive things about Mark had been his infatuation with Twentieth Century classical music. The couple always listened to atonal symphonies; Cara didn’t object. She believed Mark’s music was the kind she should have loved if she did everything right.

“That was fun!” Cara said when they’d finished.

“You’re nice,” Brian said, and put his right hand over hers.

“You’re nice too,” she answered. It felt as if Brian’s hand was not just touching hers, but mounting it.

They sped 70 miles an hour up the Palisades Parkway. Cara watched Brian steer, relaxed, using only his left hand. It wasn’t any man who could pull off a swagger driving a Prius.

The Falls Inn’s lobby furniture was Early Americana; the wallpaper a cream background with red and blue eagles. The worn brown tweed carpet reminded Cara of the carpet at the Thom McAnn where her father bought his bargain shoes. Hanging over the check-in desk was the sign: “If you don’t like us, you can always sleep next door.” An arrow pointed in the direction of the lake and falls.

“Every year, I promise myself I’ll shoot those eagles,” Brian said.  The hotel clerk grunted hello when he handed over the keys.

Cara didn’t pay attention to her and Brian’s room. It was dirty by any standards. She focused only on the bed: a beast that was both too big and too small; it seemed to conquer the rest of the furniture; an invasion of propped up pillows and a washed-out blanket covered with an overgrown field of polyester blue poppies. It was only a full-size mattress, too soft to the touch. She and Brian would sink into it, swallowed whole; one on top of the other.

She started to unpack. There it was again, the abyss. She stopped.

“You okay?” Brian asked.

 “It’s charming here,” Cara said and forced a smile.

“You’re very polite!” Brain said and laughed: “Next time I’ll pick someplace really nice for just the two of us.” He sounded so sincere, so sure there would be a next time.

“Let’s go. I want you to meet the crew.” Brian took Cara’s hand; once again, she let herself enjoy the heft of it.

The Su Casa crowd had crammed  into someone’s room; it  throbbed with loud conversations and the sexy undertones of Marvin Gay’s silky voice played low. There was a  pleasant stink of weed.

The group was big on Birkenstocks, and tee-shirts that must have fit better when they were young. Cara was in camouflage: designer jeans that for $200 had been pre-ripped and frayed. Brian pointed people out, their names and faces flashed by. She only knew she was surrounded by schoolteachers, social workers, doctors with a few lawyers and dentists, a plumber thrown in.

“Meet our hosts,” Brian said. He introduced a tiny couple in their seventies. Taffy was round as a butterball.  Her thin blonde hair was high and puffy; it resembled a dandelion’s head. Irving’s long neck was so skinny, it seemed to be drowning in his t-shirt; he had a wide forehead and a ring of gray hair, like a monk.

Irving turned to Brian and asked: “Have  you spotted Darrell  Then he turned to Cara:

“You really get to know someone when you dig graves together.”

“You’ve dug graves?” Cara was sorry that slipped out. Maybe dig graves was a euphemism.

 “Darrell and I were assigned numbers that guaranteed Vietnam. But Darrell had connections with the gravedigger’s union. You know what that meant?” Irving asked. He didn’t wait for Cara to answer.

 “Grave diggers were classified essential workers. Exempt. Who’d believe the U.S. of A. would consider burying dead people more important than killing live ones!”

 “Irving enjoys meeting new people just so he can get that line out,” Brian said and laughed.

“It’s a good line,” Cara said. If she stood near Irving the entire weekend, she wouldn’t have to worry about getting a word in edgewise.

“Darrell!”  Irving said. “He just walked in! Brian, can I borrow you for a Bro Reunion. Darrell asked about you.”

“I’ll introduce you, Cara,” Brian said.

 “I can entertain Cara,” Taffy said. “Go. We girls can get acquainted.”

Brian hesitated. He draped an arm around Cara’s shoulder and whispered: “Just a quick hello.”

 “Go,” Taffy said again.  The two women watched Brian and Irving weave their way across the room.

Taffy turned to Cara: “So how’d you like Woodstock?”  

“Oh Woodstock! I  wasn’t allowed to go. I’d just turned thirteen,” she said. “My cousin Jane went. She was sixteen.”  Jane was the first girl Cara ever saw wearing jeans with heels. That outfit meant only one thing – Jane had actually had sex.

“Ah Cousin Jane. I met her there! Stoned. Long straight hair parted down the middle, thin, naked, except for an ankle bracelet.” Taffy said and laughed. Cara laughed too; politely. She wasn’t sure if she was being made fun of.

Taffy lapsed into silence. “Brian is like a brother to us,” she said. She stared at Cara.

“Okay,” Cara said, nervous.

“He paid his dues with Margot. And …”

“And?”

“There are some wounds there. He needs time to heal.”

“Me too,” Cara said. She was angry. Was Taffy saying Brian should be left alone?

“He told me you lost your husband. I’m sorry.”

 “I didn’t lose him.  I know exactly where he is.”

“Sure honey! Sorry. Let this busybody old woman give you some wine.”

Taffy stuck out her own cup. Cara hesitated; then downed the remainder of Taffy’s wine; Someone, thank God, said it was time to eat.

At dinner, the goulash was awful, the conversation was more fun than Cara had expected. She sat next to Taffy, who recounted how she’d bullied a young clerk at a head shop into giving her a senior citizen discount. “Forty dollars for a bong! How can an old woman, on a fixed income, afford those prices? Taffy said, and laughed. She winked at Cara. It was an apology wink. Cara winked back.

Next Cara came in first place in Irving’s test of state capitals (smallest capital Montpelier VT.) She was proud and relieved she could show off her smarts; more and more she’d been feeling like a repository of useless information that no one in the real world cared about.

Their waiter wore a t-shirt: Be Alert, the World Needs More Lerts.  He was sweet, solicitous. He slipped Cara a few slices of lemon, arranged in such a way that they all seemed to be smiling up at her.

The wine was all you could drink. (Dependent on how fast you could refill your small Dixie cup.).  Brian said he’d play sommelier; Cara’s kept asking him to fill her cup.

After dinner, nearly the entire Su Casa crowd traipsed to the adjacent field, where they’d first met. The autumn air was scented pine. A full moon broke into the black night; it glowed white hot.

Brian pulled out a flask; he and Cara passed it back and forth. He searched, as he did every year, for the tree where he’d carved his initials on the way home from Woodstock. He squatted down in front of a giant Maple and traced with his fingers a line of tiny illegible scratches on its bark. “Me!” he said. “That kid feels like someone I used to know.”

“Do you think about Margot often?” Cara asked. “Did you meet at Woodstock?” Cara realized she didn’t know much about Margot at all.

“No. And no,” Brian said. “Shhh.”  He put his finger on his lips. “Is it okay if we leave Margot for another night?”

In the distance, Cara could hear one of the Su Casa crowd play a harmonica; voices drifted towards them singing: “Don’t think twice. It’s alright.” Cara lost count of how many times she raised the flask to her lips.

She didn’t want to leave Margot for another night. She realized Brian had never talked about her. But he’d sounded so sad when he asked. So forsaken. Just like she felt.

She reached for  Brian’s hand and gently guided him back to their room. The crunch of gravel under their feet reminded Cara of summer camp when she was thirteen and at her most daring; those late-night secret raids to the boys’ bunk.

Neither spoke nor flicked a light switch. Brian lifted Cara and carried her to the bed; it was such a corny move, they both cracked up. The sight of Brian’s hairless chest and belly made him seem more naked than Mark had ever been. He kissed her neck, stroked her tiny waist, down to the grand gesture of her hips, stroked her between her legs that spread so swiftly and defiantly open, it seemed to Cara that she might never want them closed again. Her back arched. Her newly painted Bungle Jungle Red toes flexed and pointed. She went for every piece of him, held and licked and kissed him.

In the middle of the night, Cara woke disoriented. Brian was on his stomach; naked; his long legs twisted up in sheets; he’d commandeered most of the bed. Cara sat up, naked too. A pit in her stomach.

Silently, carefully, she carried  the big black pocketbook into the bathroom. She sat on the toilet and rummaged through it, pushed aside the sleeves of Social Teas; the magnifying mirror; the ridiculous wool hat; until she found, at the bottom of the bag, that picture of Mark on their last trip to Paris. He was beaming in a beret; he’d joked that it perfectly covered his bald spot.

In the morning, it seemed as if the day itself were hung over. Chilly, damp, a gray sky too wrung out to whip up rain. Then someone in the group suggested a hike!  People changed into hiking boots! Hiking poles appeared out of nowhere! Cara refused a pole. She told Brian not to worry that she didn’t have hiking boots; she did all her hiking in sneakers. Technically that was true, since she was about to embark on her first ever long hike since camp.

What a way to spend a day! Trudging through nature. A hike on a trail to nowhere but the top seemed ridiculous.  In the beginning, the path was easy; a small dirt road that gently wound around a hill. They came upon a field of small deep purple wild flowers.

“This is so beautiful,” Cara said.

“Lawns are stupid,” Brian said. “Nature was not meant to be mowed.”

Suddenly, the path veered straight up. Hand over hand, Cara climbed.  Rock by rock.  Cara pulled herself up and up. But it seemed as if the hill had morphed into a mountain.  Her fingers blistered, her palms were furrowed with dirt,  her sneakers lined with pebbles.  She stopped speaking altogether and barely registered that Brian had moved behind her  in case she slipped.

 “Where is the fucking top?” she finally screamed. “Please tell me it’s around here somewhere!”

“I got you,” Brian said to her. For the next hour, he told her bad jokes and once sang ‘Climb every mountain,’ doing a Bing Crosby imitation.

“Alright, I’m moving just to get away from you,” she said. “Put me down for a laugh if I ever get my breath back.”

Finally, Cara made it all the way up. Exhausted, muddy and mildly exhilarated.

“I did it, didn’t I?” She said to Brian.

“I’m as surprised as you are,” Brian said and laughed.

Cara hugged him: “I’d like to thank the man behind the woman.”

It was almost dark by the time the Su Casa crowd returned to the hotel; right after showers, they threw themselves on their dinner. It was not the type of food meant to be admired nor eaten, yet it was perfect for people too ravenous to care.

As soon as dinner was over, ten or so Su Casa people traipsed forty yards to a low concrete building: the hotel bar. Circa 1970s, dark paneling, a juke box, a bunch of wooden tables, a tiny dance floor. Behind the bar: a small black and white TV with a broken antenna; a deer’s head, red and green Christmas lights wrapped around its neck; a large American flag mounted next to it.

The bar was dark, dank. Cara inhaled the sweet stink of beer and cigarette smoke. Somewhere from the back of the room, came the sound of a toilet flushing. The bar had a certain run-down charm, with its fake Tiffany chandeliers; standing at attention next to the cash register, a ceramic pig in an army uniform. When Mark first died, Cara would have liked to take refuge in a place like this; here she could have grieved in public, and no one would have noticed or cared.

The bartender was their waiter. Cara waved as if she’d seen an old friend. Bryan pulled her onto the dance floor.  She was exhausted from the hike and just swayed the first few minutes. Then I Heard it From the Grapevine worked its charms: Cara wiggled her hips, shimmied her shoulders; raised her arms high. She felt floaty; capable of doing anything; one stiff wind and she’d go airborne.

For over an hour, the Su Casa crowd had the entire place to itself. When Brian and Cara finally ran out of breath, they sat at a table with Irving, Taffy and Ruth, a retired nursery school teacher. Cara recalled being told Ruth’s preference ran to bad boys; and it ran often.

She had a heart-shaped face and bright hazel eyes. Her long dyed-blond hair was curly and wild; she was in her late fifties, plump. One of those women who might have endured a young man’s insulting compliment: I bet you used to be beautiful.

“Did you know this is our Lady of the Perpetual Costco?” Irving said. “To make up for the lousy food, every reunion, Milady Ruthie brings us bushels of Costco fruit.”

Ruth nodded, and ceremoniously placed three large Tupperware bowls on the table: one with apples, another with pears and in the largest container, cherries.

“Please partake,” Ruth said and smiled. Cara liked her immediately; she seemed so genuinely happy to watch Cara pick up a slice of pear.

Even with the juke box playing, Cara heard the roar of motorcycles that rode right up to the bar’s front door. Two men, early thirties, entered. One was massive, the other scrawny. They remained in the doorway a few seconds and scanned the room. Then they picked up beers from the bar; sat at a table across the dance floor; the seats furthest from the Su Casa crowd.

Irving pointed a finger at them: “Townies.”

“Locals,” Taffy said. “Townies is insulting.”

“You should be happy I didn’t call them deplorables,” Irving said.

Ruth let her long hair fall over her face like a curtain. “Uh-Oh. I had a fling with one of those guys two years ago.”

“Which one?” Taffy asked.

“The cute one. He’s Dennis,” Ruth said. She pointed to the massive man, who sat backwards on a chair, spread-eagle. Even at a distance, Cara clearly saw the snake tattoo coiled around the back of his neck.  

“Cute!” Irving said. “Then I’m  Mister America!”

“I’m going to say hello. For old time’s sake,” Ruth said. She stood and piled her thick hair on top of her head, then let it fall down her back. She filled a napkin with cherries.

“No Ruthie! We don’t want anything to do with them,” Taffy called after Ruth, but she was already crossing the dance floor.

Irving, Taffy, Cara and Brian watched Ruth approach the bikers. She put the napkin of cherries on their table, then whispered something to Dennis.

He stood and walked to the dance floor. Ruth followed him. From the juke box, the Supremes sang “Love Child.”

They started to dance free-style. They were both terrible; Ruth moved one arm then the other; Dennis seemed to march in place. The two danced closer and closer. Suddenly  Dennis reached out for Ruth, gathered her up. She put her arms around his neck. It was such a sweet sight; Cara remembered Mark sometimes held her so close on a dance floor, they ended up breathing in sync.  

The scrawny biker jumped to his feet.  He reached the dance floor right away. He held up the cherries wrapped in the napkin. Ruthie and Dennis stopped dancing. Cara watched the scrawny biker yell, but the music made it impossible to make out what he was saying.  Dennis shook his head and walked away, towards the bar. Ruth swiftly crossed the dance floor, back to their Su Casa table. The scrawny biker followed her.

He stood too close to Cara, though he seemed unaware of her. He wore a leather vest over a t-shirt. A tattoo of a skull covered one of his forearms. Inked into the corner of his neck, almost hidden in the well of his collar bone, a small tattoo. A blue-black  swastika. Cara couldn’t take her eyes off it; she had never seen a swastika on live flesh. She was afraid to turn her back on it.

“He called me a whore,” Ruth whispered, and let her hair fall over her face again.

The scrawny biker dropped the napkin on the table. He stared at Ruth: “We don’t want your cherries. Or the Jew box they came in.”

“Apologize!” Brian shouted before Cara even noticed he was on his feet. She held her breath.

 “I don’t see that happening Hymie.”

Cara ran over to Brian and grabbed his hand; she could feel his whole body lurch forward. 

“Don’t take the bait,” Irving stage-whispered to Brian, who nodded stiffly.

“Get. Out. Now!” Brian said.

The room went quiet except for the wail of the Supremes. The two men locked eyes. Brian squeezed Cara’s hand hard. She winced quietly. If either man took another step; they’d be in each other’s faces.

The scrawny biker turned around –  to check for backup, Cara knew immediately. No help was coming; Dennis was still at the bar with his back to the room.

The scrawny biker became jittery; jumped up and down and shook his hands as if he were trying to shake off the stench of the cherries.

“Well,” Brian said. That Well came out raw, angry, final. Cara closed her eyes for a moment, scared.

The scrawny biker let out a sign and shrugged. “Get this into your head.” He pulled a leaflet from his back pocket and dropped it on the table. He backed away and turned around. He called out to Dennis as he walked off: “We’re leaving Hymie town. Now!”

Cara was the first to grab the leaflet. She felt both afraid and brave.  A group of Su Casa members crowded around the tiny table: they were waiting for her to read the leaflet out loud.

At first, Cara was speechless; it took her a few seconds to wrap her mind around the meaning of the first line; to realize a swastika had replaced an “o”; the Star of David replaced the “a.”

Cara was too nervous to explain that slogan; she pressed ahead.

She read slowly, loudly:

Rally Sunday!  At the Field: Noon!!

We must organize;  

We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children. Because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the Earth!

Jews will not replace us!

“An Aryan rally!” Brian said. “What the fuck!”

“Didn’t I tell you, Taffy! Neo-Nazis, racists, anti-Semites. They’ve gotten the green light. Now they’re crawling out of the woodwork.”

“We have to counter-protest,” Brian said.

“Damn right!” Irving said.

“No! We’re going home tomorrow early.” The shriek of Taffy’s voice, “Why do you want to get us mixed up in this? It’s too dangerous.”

Cara was afraid to move. She felt as if she’d been flung far away; she struggled to get back to the bar; to be part of the havoc that had broken out around her. She had that same sense  when Mark died. If she closed her eyes very tight, then opened them very wide, Mark would appear. Instead the Nazi leaflet was still in her hands.

In the synagogue of her childhood, every year Sunday schoolteachers played a grainy black and white film; silent, with only four subtitles that always punched Cara in the gut as death threats: Auschwitz; Buchenwald; Dachau, and Chelmno.

She’d gotten used to the camera scanning pile after pile of bodies. It was the sight of those few remaining survivors that always did her in. Emaciated men, trying without teeth to smile; to wave at her with skeleton hands; their fleshless faces so sunken-in that their watery eyes seemed to pop from their skulls. All seemed to be pleading with her. 

She always understood the lessons from the film; she’d been born on the right side of history. Others had suffered, so that Jewish-American girls like her could grow up protected, safe, their happiness guaranteed. as long as they stayed with their own.

Cara couldn’t bear holding the leaflet another second. She’d been cocooned in a world that didn’t exist. She’d lived, first as a girl and then a married woman, as if she were a rescued Jew. Rescued, saved from all the ugliness of the world: anti-Semitism, poverty, even a husband’s untimely death.

“Are you okay?” Brian put his arm around her and eased her into a chair; Cara hadn’t realized she was shaking.

“Can we go?” Cara asked.

Brian took her hand: “I’d like to be at that rally tomorrow.”

They walked back in silence. Cara listened to the sounds of the trees rustling; the racket of crickets ; the rush of the falls. An owl, unseen, called out. She and Brian walked right past the tree with his initials; he said nothing. The gravel crunched beneath their feet. The sky glowed.

The real world would come for you one way or another.

Cara’s grandmother had told her that in Jewish lore, the man in the moon lived there broken; banished from earth because he’d violated the Sabbath.

But that night the moon burned bright: a gutsy man, an unflinching witness to the entire world.

Cara squeezed Brian’s hand: “I’m in.”

▪ ▪ ▪

Joanne Naiman is an attorney, who received a Clarion award for her legal journalism. Her work has appeared in, among other places, HuffPost and Fairlight Books’ short story of the week. She is a native and chronic New Yorker. Read a commentary by the author on her story.

journal | team | miscellany | podcast | home