Gillian, it was Gittel! Your mother was my older sister, Gittel.”
Baffled, Jess blurted out, “My mother couldn’t be your sister. You’re too young to be my aunt.”
“I’m the youngest in the family.” Now tears filled Chaya’s eyes. “I’m the youngest of nine. Gittel was the oldest sister. She ran away when I was a baby, and she left the rest of us behind.”
“They’re getting started now.” Clarence and Umesh, with white flowers pinned to their sweaters, were ushering stragglers into the auditorium, where Bach radiated from a scientific-looking pipe organ, all sawed-off cylinders.
“Jess. Let’s go.” Richard had returned for her.
“Hold on a second—” Jess began.
“We’re sitting with Emily in front.” Richard swept past Chaya in her gold buttons and he took Jess by the arm. In his grip, Jess remembered all the slights of childhood, along with larger silences, the relatives he never spoke about, the grandparents who had died, the family in London that Gillian had disowned because they had disowned her.
“We are gathered today,” Dave intoned at the lectern, “to celebrate the lives of two very special people.”
In their reserved seats in the front row, Jess sat folding and refolding her program in her lap. How could this be? How could her own mother be a Bialystoker? Maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe this was just some fairy tale Chaya had made up. When they found out she was Emily’s sister, people responded in strange ways, speaking in hushed voices, making odd connections, bringing up an acquaintance of their own who had been killed, or a distant cousin who had gone missing. Jess thought Chaya must be wrong, and yet certain phrases returned to her from Gillian’s letters:
Jess could not concentrate at all. She could not think about Jonathan. Her own questions interrupted every eulogy. Who was Gillian? And if Chaya was right about her, why had Gillian kept such a secret from her children?
How self-centered the imagination was. The living thought about the living, even when they had gathered to speak about the dead. Orion sensed Molly staring at him, considering him, possibly judging him, maybe even dangerously, expensively forgiving him. Rabbi Zylberfenig stroked his beard and rehearsed his remarks silently, while Lou produced his reading glasses and shuffled the typed pages of his poem. Orion’s father had his game face on. Lou understood that he was also clergy.
“Mel Millstein hired me at ISIS. He gave me my chance….” Sorel leaned over as she spoke, and her white usher’s-flower weighed down her décolletage. “He always looked after me….”
Lou told Orion, “I’ll bet he did.”
At the lectern Dave recalled, “The first time I met Jonathan, I thought, ‘Is this guy for real?’ Let me rephrase that. I thought, ‘Is this
“It’s one thing to have confidence when the going is great. It’s another thing to feel that way when the going gets tough. That’s the mark of a leader, a hero if you will.” Dave coughed. “I don’t use the word
“The last time I saw Jonathan, we were in a meeting and I felt, as I sometimes did, that I had to rein him in. I said, ‘The climate is challenging right now.’ He said: ‘The climate’s history. The point is where we’re going.’ He was already thinking ahead. Six months ago, even nine months ago, he thought his way into a new space. He came to us with that gleam in his eye. He stood at the whiteboard and he wasn’t moaning, he wasn’t whining—he never whined about anything. He was like a kid in a candy store. ‘I have a new paradigm. I have a new plan….’ He had no idea then how important his new plan would be—a new system for data tracking.”
Dave’s words overflowed with feeling, and in the audience tears flowed freely. Even Lou almost forgot his own performance. Only Emily sat up, dry-eyed. Others heard a tribute to Jonathan’s indomitable spirit. Emily understood that he had stolen her information, appropriated and built a version of electronic fingerprinting.
“He would never let us down,” Dave said. “He would never say die. He led as he lived, fearless, imaginative, excited about the future. How could we lose someone who loved life so much?”
But Emily thought, Jonathan, how could you betray me? All those conversations where you accused me of putting Veritech first. All those times you said I was inflexible. Had you sold me out already? Six months ago. Nine months ago. Had you already betrayed me then?
She heard the other speakers in a dream. She heard them all from far away. Rabbi Zylberfenig spoke of angels. “Our sages teach that for each of us on Earth, there is an angel. This is very interesting to think about. We are each one of a matching pair. Therefore in the universe, we are not alone….”
A baby wailed.
Aldwin read from Kahlil Gibran.
Sorel sat on a stool and sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” accompanying herself on her guitar.
Until, like the main event he was, Lou Steiner took the stage. Shuffling his papers, clearing his throat, he seemed to have lost his place somehow. Emily stared at him, but she didn’t see him. Orion glared at Lou, and he thought, My God, he’s drunk. But he underestimated his father. Lou knew his poem by heart, and the poem he recited was not the one promised. Not “Where Are the Bees?” but something else entirely, one of his old sixties flower poems.
How? Emily asked Jonathan. How could you?
This was not the villanelle printed in the program, not at all the short sweet poem Dave and the memorial committee had expected. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, Dave leaned forward to look at Orion.
Orion shook his head and smiled. With a grim satisfaction, he thought, Fuck you. Even you can’t tell my father what to do. He didn’t see Emily’s face, so pale, or hear her panicked thoughts: How could you? How could you?
The audience squirmed and whispered as Lou shifted into higher gear. What did this have to do with Mel and
