A reason to see you agai.., p.1
A Reason to See You Again, page 1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Part I: Moves
Chapter 1: 1971
Chapter 2: 1976
Chapter 3: 1976
Chapter 4: 1980
Part II: Vacations
Chapter 5: 1981
Chapter 6: 1985
Chapter 7: 1986
Part III: Affairs
Chapter 8: 1989
Chapter 9: 1992
Chapter 10: 1995
Part IV: Emergencies
Chapter 11: 1999
Chapter 12: 2000
Chapter 13: 2002
Part V: Confessions
Chapter 14: 2003
Chapter 15: 2004
Chapter 16: 2006
Chapter 17: 2007
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Jami Attenberg
Copyright
About the Publisher
Part I
Moves
Chapter 1
1971
Oh, the games families play with each other.
In the Cohen household, it was Scrabble, and they played it every Saturday night. This was one of Frieda’s rules. Telephone unplugged, the whole family together. The girls were still young enough that they had nowhere urgent to be but right there. Nancy, fifteen; Shelly, twelve. Idling in the living room with their father, Rudy, while Frieda made popcorn in the kitchen. Tonight Lawrence Welk led some orchestral tribute to America on the television set, Rudy nodding his head along to the music. Rudy: frail, angular, fading, but loving and present. A real bon vivant when he had the energy. I want him alive, thought Frieda. I must feed him. A frantic feeling. Him, she must take care of him. She salted and buttered the popcorn in good, thick, fatty layers. Humming as she delivered it in a Tupperware bowl to the family, who sat, sunken in a green velvet conversation pit. A Lucite table at the center, set up with the game board. A family waiting. Press play.
Shelly clapped for the popcorn. “It smells divine,” she said. “What a delicious and satisfying treat.” Shelly always trying on words for size. She popped one piece after another into her mouth; she liked to have something to do with her hands. A place to direct her nervous energy, thought Frieda. This whole family was nervous. Everyone was worried about Rudy, who had been sick and then not sick and then sick again. It had been this way for years. Malnutrition in his youth, in the camps, and all the stress, then and always. Now he had a bad heart. He was forty-one and looked sixty. A little worse this year, but then again, what did worse mean when things had been bad for so long? So it was good for them all to be together, thought Frieda, every Saturday. A regular moment for the family, private, after the crowds at shul the night before. But also: she wanted to win at Scrabble.
The girls were good at the game. Competitive enough to keep things interesting. Frieda had taught them some tricks. All the two-letter words, the most potent available ways to use Q and X. Their little sponge minds preparing for their next moves.
There was Nancy, organizing her tiles to be just so. She liked it when ideas clicked together easily and was sharp enough to find a few five- or six-letter words here and there. A tidy girl. Demure, pretty. Mildly interested in lots of things but not one thing especially. She’d do all right, thought Frieda. At this game. In life.
Shelly was the real challenger in the family: strategic, focused, unflappable. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, healthy, peach-toned skin, a generally intense presence, even for a child. She left no loose ends behind, blocked every exit and entry point if she could help it. Our little winner, thought Frieda. Smarter than everyone in the room, perhaps. But she better not beat me, thought Frieda. Not yet.
Rudy was a useless competitor, just there to have fun with his family. English was his second language and though he spoke it well, he didn’t have the same competitive spirit attached to the game. “Now if this were in German, I would defeat you all,” he said. “Lawrence Welk is who I should be playing.” He was daydreamy and faint and beautiful; their thin, pale Papa, who had been released from the camps barely a teenager, starved, starving, and made his way to America to exist as a hero in their eyes. The girls could not ever imagine being as hungry as he had been. All of them wondered, marveled at his presence. He knew how to hold a room—even if it was simply by being alive.
For a while, when he was younger, he had given speeches to temples across America about his journey. What was it like in the camps? The American Jews really wanted to know. Most survivors didn’t want to talk about it, but Rudy thought it was important they hear the truth. When Frieda had met him, he had seemed so sophisticated even in his frailty. An elegant speaker, and funny, too. That silk scarf he had tied around his neck. What a story. He told it well. People warmed to him quickly. He had needed a secretary, he said, and she traveled with him, until it was just easier to be married. Frieda was only nineteen. Attached, already, to a man. She thought he’d be the breadwinner forever. He should be paid for what he went through; she firmly believed that.
Once, Hollywood had even been interested in what had happened to him. Rudy and Frieda as newlyweds, poolside, sunburned, giddy. A cabana boy dipping to serve them. A producer who had rushed in, ordering a drink from no one in particular as he moved along the patio, then shaking Frieda’s hand and holding it for a moment with both of his.
And then: nothing happened. Letters still arrived on occasion, typed, formal, offering a travel stipend and maybe a small speaker’s fee. They saved them up and placed a down payment on this house that Rudy, with all his stylish desires, had wanted. This modern home. But then there had been new wars. And then fewer speeches to give, and, after a while, less of everything else in their lives. Bookkeeping work for him, shifts in a nursing home for her. Popcorn at home cost less than popcorn in the movie theater. No one knew how to budget quite like Frieda. Scrabble—Frieda’s favorite—was entirely free, of course. And tonight, Shelly was winning. By a lot.
“Does anyone want some more popcorn?” Frieda didn’t wait for an answer. In the kitchen, she stole sips of slivovitz from a handle of it hidden in the cupboard behind the teakettle. A fresh bottle, purchased last week, after she had started work in a new home. She was an aide like her mother, Goldie, had been before her in her way, always tending, tending to people. One husband for Goldie, and then another, until there was no one left, and certainly no one to take care of her, Frieda already long gone. She, too, had liked her sips of slivovitz to pass the time, sometimes sharing it with young Frieda to keep her quiet.
Frieda didn’t even like the taste of it, hadn’t then, still didn’t now, but the general effect of it was soothing and familiar. Someday she would develop a new favorite drink. Someday she would drink whatever was around, no matter what, just to be drunk. Thoughtlessly. In between caring for others. Care was what she was good at. The care of strangers. Strangers and husbands. Not children. Whose children were these? she sometimes thought. Now they were people. Who beat her at Scrabble. They would leave her someday and not look back for a long time. But she didn’t know that yet.
When she returned to the living room with the popcorn, she snuck a glance at Shelly’s tiles from behind. Maybe she had a chance yet. She rubbed her hands together as she sat, a little less steady now from the slivovitz. But buoyant for the moment.
* * *
THIS GAME THEY PLAYED ON SATURDAY NIGHTS DID NOT BRING Rudy the same kind of pleasure it did his wife. He watched now as she taunted Nancy, who had put down BOY and missed a nearby double-word score. “That’s all you have to show me?” said Frieda. A tart, sharp laugh.
“Frieda, my dear,” he said, but did not continue. He did not have the energy tonight to either start or finish a fight.
“Is there something you need to say?” she said. A curdled flirtatiousness.
“We’re just having fun,” he said gently. More and more lately he’d had to step in between her and the children. She seemed angry at them. He couldn’t bring himself to discuss it with her, not in a real way. Her competitive energy wasted, he thought. Stuck with all of us. Here in the suburbs. With the wrong man, he thought. The wrong house, the wrong life. (Or was he thinking of himself?) But the girls were sane and healthy and smart. He had wanted children desperately, to bring more Jews back into the world. A kind of compensation. Sometimes he had nightmares that he couldn’t protect them. Last year he had given them both matching gold necklaces with paper-thin gold chai pendants, and oh, how they had hugged him. They loved him, even though he hid from them. On Thursday nights. That was the night just for him, in the silk robes.
What if things had gone differently? He thought about California all the time, though it had been years since he had been there, the sun imbuing his flesh and bones with possibility. Alive, I could be alive there, he thought. What that producer had wanted, he had wanted, too. The three of them in a cabana, the curtain closed. An old, hairy, horny, powerful man, with a stiff grin on his face. Loosened Rudy’s robe for him. Took him in his warm hands. It had confused Frieda. She didn’t understand that kind of decadence. She wasn’t built that way. I married this young girl, he thought. Still, I thought maybe she knew. My fault. That day, she had asked the two men to stop, and he couldn’t argue. They never heard from the producer again. California sun, so far away now. At least he had his Thursdays.
And now they had Shelly to manage, their champion. Another shot at the sun. Her test scores were off the charts, her school had reported. She’d skipped a grade alrea dy. The school wanted her to start competing on the math team. She would be bored soon enough with what they could do for her. Last week, she’d asked if she could study Latin. Just to try it. He looked up at his youngest daughter. Casually chewing on popcorn. This wasn’t even a game to her. Just a problem to solve. She had put down PETRIFY.
“Excellent work, darling,” he said.
“Sure, sure,” mumbled Frieda, who was frantically reordering her tiles. Auburn, frizzy hair, tall, strong, handsome, with mountainous tits he fondled helplessly upon her request once a month. “Why do I always have to follow Shelly?” she said.
But this was the order they played in—every time. Shelly before Frieda, Frieda before Nancy, Nancy before Rudy, and Rudy before Shelly. They had tried it in other formations over the years, but it never worked. Frieda wanted to follow Rudy, who scattered letters on the board carelessly until some sort of shape formed. Shelly had no feelings about anyone else, one way or the other, who she wanted to beat: she was simply a machine, looking for the best path.
Nancy would spark when challenged but was also happy to coast. This wasn’t her game and never would be.
* * *
WHAT WAS NANCY’S GAME? IN THIS HOUSE, SHE EXISTED IN THE context of others, specifically Shelly. Nancy, aware that there was a specialness to her younger sister, or at least that Shelly was more special than she was, more obviously bright, quantifiably brilliant, real brains that could be measured, tested. Perfect math scores. The Golden Ticket, her brain, like Charlie had sung in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, a movie Frieda had let them sit through two Saturday matinees back-to-back because they had loved it. Nancy, mixed with jealousy and admiration for Shelly, who already knew so much. But also, maybe Shelly was too eccentric. A disqualification, in Nancy’s eyes.
Outside the house, Nancy moved easily through the world. Hair, already curled; clothes, just so, pristine. Impeccable makeup. Boys liked her. She got invited to all the parties first, bar mitzvahs, and birthdays, and then the dances. Shelly obviously thought her older sister’s concerns were ridiculous. “Parties and boys, who cares?” said Shelly. “I’m going to rule the world someday.” But nevertheless, Nancy sensed Shelly envied and was curious about Nancy’s life. Catching Shelly alone in their room, fingering a blouse laid out on the bed. “Poor jealous girl,” said Nancy. Did they snap at each other sometimes? Yes. Never like their mother did at them though.
But Nancy would always tell her the truth, and Shelly would do the same for her. Even as they challenged each other, moved in and out of each other’s lives over the years, disappearing entirely at times, it was a thing they thought they could count on when they needed it. The truth. Even if other people lied to them, they knew where to go for answers. If not each other, then who? Truth or dare, and they always chose truth. Until it turned into another kind of game: How close could they come to saying something to each other that they’d regret forever? Chicken.
* * *
THEY WOULD PLAY THREE GAMES EVERY SATURDAY, THIS FAMILY. That’s how long they could tolerate it, the game, each other. The first game was fun and loose; the second game the girls were warmed up, absorbed by it all, prodded by Frieda to pay attention; and the third game, Frieda was tense, and a little mean. Maybe even the girls were scared to win.
Rudy didn’t care about any of that. He just liked to move things along. His wife claimed he wasn’t fun to play with, but the girls would have been desperate without him there. He didn’t care if he won or lost. Saturdays weren’t about him. They were about the family. He had his own day, when he could dress as he pleased in those garments made of silk, sashes at the waist, sometimes alone and sometimes in the company of others like him, or who admired people like him. A small club on River North, a private lounge. Rich and luxurious perfume scents, musky, sexy, mingled with cigarette and cigar and hash smoke. He was an elder there, but at last no one saw him as a survivor. He was simply beautiful.
He had caught the girls playing in his trunk a few times and had let them try on some of his clothes. “But don’t tell your mother—I’ll get in trouble.” “Why?” “It is just the way it is. We are doing nothing wrong, but still we must not discuss, OK, liebchen?” Nancy twirling around, Shelly sniffing the sweet, scented material. Why couldn’t he tell her? Wouldn’t it make their lives easier? He didn’t have the answers though.
What he did know was that he felt better and more like himself on Thursday nights. He could shut off the noise of his past that made him toss and turn every other night of the week. On Thursdays he entered his house quietly, late, showered, and then slept soundly, completely, through till the morning.
But on Saturdays he was meant to sit in the middle, between his sharp and ferocious wife and their children. Frieda complained about where they sat, but it was the best order for them to play the game. He was supposed to shield them from who she was, at least the way she was on Saturday nights, after a long week of work, tending to the sick and dying, sneaking sips of slivovitz—oh, he knew about that, and he did that, too, could you blame him? Parents, children, secrets. These rules that other people wrote for them before they were even born. Give the man a drink already.
When Rudy dies a year later, the Scrabble box will gather dust for a while, and then the three remaining Cohens will try and play it again, and it will not end well: Frieda, now entirely incapable of playing nice, taking big, blatant swipes at her daughters, Shelly grimly staring at the board, and finally, Nancy bawling, and stomping out of the room. (Why am I always the baby here, thought Nancy that night, wistful, alone, in her room, when I’m the oldest? How did it end up like this?) They needed Rudy to balance things out. But Rudy was gone.
* * *
IT WAS SHELLY’S TURN AGAIN. QUEER, A TRIPLE-WORD SCORE. Frieda threw her hands in the air. “You set her up, Rudy! Don’t you care at all about winning?”
“No,” he said, and his daughters chimed in with him, a loud, laughing, united, “No!” “You’re the only one who cares,” he said. “I care, too,” said Shelly. “OK, Shelly cares, too,” said Rudy. “I care about having a nice time with my family.”
Shelly patted the bag of Scrabble letters before she picked her next round, feeling for how many tiles were left. She glanced at her score on the pad in front of her mother. She counted what letters had been used, and what remained. She could hold all that information in her head. She looked at the faces of her family members. She knew what they had to give, how much they cared, what their stakes were in the game, what they were capable of. She did all the math. There were actual numbers and then the people were numbers in their way, too. She calculated, and then she realized she’d won. And she could do it again. She’d figured out a way to beat her mother.
Then she saw the look on her mother’s face. Was there even an ounce of pride or just pure annoyance? She looked to Rudy instead. Smiling at his smart little girl. There, now, was the love she needed.
Her mother bumped the board with her arm and the girls gasped as the tiles suddenly shifted, and the words scattered. The game was ruined. “Whoops,” she said. “No, we can fix it,” said Shelly. “I think I remember all the words.” And she did, she could have. She had the entire board frozen picture-perfect in her head.
But it was enough already, for everyone. “I think that’s it for now,” said Rudy. “Bedtime for this family.”
* * *
SHE’S CLEVER, THOUGHT FRIEDA OF SHELLY. IN ALL WAYS. NOT just at this game. “She’ll be a successful person,” she tells her husband later in bed. “Of course she will,” said Rudy. “She comes from us.” But was that even true? Was there anything they had succeeded at? A tiny house in a tiny town, outside of Chicago, admittedly a good city, but the rest of this part of the country, feh. A little money left from Goldie, sitting in a savings account. It would disappear soon enough.
“She knows how to read all of us,” said Frieda.
“Well, that she gets from me,” said Rudy.
Frieda rolled over, away from her husband, and thought more about her daughter. Her big vocabulary. That ironclad memory. Shelly could do numbers in her head, and she could project into the future, see holes and crises and mistakes, and how to solve them. Frieda should feel better about this realization, that her daughter might be a big deal someday. Like she could have been (maybe) before she took a roll in the hay with some Holocaust survivor. But all she could think in the moment was that winning in Scrabble was all she had left. She started to sob.
