Just One Day

Grandma touches my hair. It’s to my shoulders now. I haven’t cut it since last summer. “It was shorter before,” I say. “It’s sort of in between.”

“It’s better than it was. That bob was awful!” Mom says.

“It was a bob, Mom. Not a Mohawk.”

“I know what it was. But it made you look like a boy.”

I turn to Grandma. “Was she traumatized by a bad haircut in her youth? Because she seems unwilling to let this go.”

Grandma claps her hands. “Oh, Ally, you might be right. When she was ten, she saw Rosemary’s Baby and begged me to take her to the children’s beauty parlor. She kept making the lady go shorter until it was all off, and as we were leaving the salon, another mother pointed Ellie out to her son and said, ‘Why don’t you get a haircut like that nice little boy?’” She looks at Mom, smiling. “I didn’t realize that still upset you, Ellie.”

“It doesn’t upset me, because it never happened, Mother. I never saw Rosemary’s Baby. And if I had, at ten, that would’ve been entirely inappropriate, by the way.”

“I can show you the pictures!”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Grandma eyes Mom’s hair. “You might think of trying that pixie again now. I think you’ve been wearing the same style since Bill Clinton was president.” Grandma gives another wicked grin.

Mom seems to shrink another inch as she touches her hair—straight, brown, in a low ponytail. Grandma leaves her like that, pulling me into the kitchen. “You want some cookies? I have some macaroons.”

“Macaroons are not cookies, Grandma. They’re coconut cookie substitutes. And they’re disgusting.” Grandma doesn’t keep anything in the house with flour during Passover.

“Let’s see what else I have.” I follow Grandma into the kitchen. She pours me some of her diet lemonade. “Your mom is having such a hard time,” Grandma says. When Mom’s out of sight, she’s sympathetic, almost defending her, like I was the one who riled her up.

“I don’t see why. She has a charmed life.”

“Funny, that’s what she says about you whenever she thinks you’re being ungrateful.” Grandma opens the oven door to check on something. “She’s having a hard time adjusting, with you being gone. You’re all she’s got.”

I feel a pit in my stomach. Another way I’ve let Mom down.

Grandma puts out a plate of those gross jelly candies I can never resist. “I told her she should have another child, give her something to do with herself.”

I spit out my lemonade. “She’s forty-seven.”

“She could adopt.” Grandma waves her hand. “One of those Chinese orphans. Lucy Rosenbaum got a cute one as a granddaughter.”

“They’re not dogs, Grandma!”

“I know that. Still, she could get an older one. It’s a real mitzvah then.”

“Did you tell Mom that?”

“Of course I did.”

Grandma always brings up things the rest of us don’t. Like she lights a memorial candle on the anniversary of when Mom had her miscarriage all those years ago. This, too, drives Mom crazy.

“She needs to do something if she’s not going back to work.” She glances out toward the living room. I know Mom and Grandma fight about Mom not working. Once, Grandma sent a clipping from a news magazine about how badly the ex-wives of doctors fared financially in the event of divorce. They didn’t speak for months after that.

Mom comes into the kitchen. She glances at the jelly candy. “Mother, can you feed her some real food, please?”

“Oh, cool your jets. She can feed herself. She’s nineteen now.” She winks at me, then turns to Mom. “Why don’t you take some cold cuts out?”

Mom pokes in Grandma’s refrigerator. “Where’s the brisket? It’s almost two now. We should put it in soon.”

“Oh, it’s already cooking,” Grandma says.

“What time did you put in?”

“Don’t you worry. I got a nice recipe from the paper.”

“How long has it been in?” Mom peeks in the oven. “It’s not that big. It shouldn’t take longer than three hours. And you have to cover it in foil. Also you have the heat way up. Brisket’s meant to slow-cook. We’re starting the Seder at five? When did it go in?”

“Never you mind.”

“It’ll be like leather.”

“Do I tell you how to cook in your kitchen?”

“Yes. All the time. But I don’t listen. And we’ve dodged many a case of food poisoning because of it.”

“Enough of your smart mouth.”

“I think I’ll go change,” I announce. But neither one is paying attention to me anymore.

I go into the spare room and find Dad hiding in there, looking wistfully at a golf shirt. “What are the chances I can escape for a round?”

“You’d have to throw down some plagues at the Pharaoh first.” I look out the window to the silver-blue strip of sea.

He puts the golf shirt back in the suitcase. How quickly we all give in to her. This Seder means nothing to him. Dad’s not even Jewish, though he celebrates all the holidays with Mom. Grandma was supposedly furious when Mom got engaged to him, though after Grandpa died, she took up with Phil, who’s not Jewish, either.

“I was just kidding,” I say, even though I wasn’t. “Why don’t you just go?”

Dad shakes his head. “Your mom needs backup.”

I scoff, as if Mom needs anything from anyone.

Dad changes the subject. “We saw Melanie last weekend.”

“Oh, really?”

“Her band had a gig in Philadelphia, so she made a rare appearance.”

She’s in a band now? So she can become Mel 4.0—and I’m supposed to stay reliably me? I smile tightly at my dad, pretending like I know this.

“Frank, I can’t find my Seder plate,” Grandma calls. “I had it out for a polish.”

“Just visualize the last place you had it,” Dad says. Then he gives me a little shrug and heads off to help. After the Seder plate is located, he helps Grandma get down serving bowls, and then I hear Mom tell him to keep Phil company, so he sits and watches the basketball with napping Phil. So much for golf. I go out onto the balcony and listen to the competing sounds of Mom and Grandma’s bickering and the game on the TV. My life feels so small it itches, like a too-tight wool sweater.

“I’m going for a walk,” I announce, even though there’s no one on the balcony but me. I put on my shoes and slip out the door and walk down to the beach. I take off my shoes and run up and down the shore. The rhythmic beat of my feet on the wet sand seems to churn something out of me, pushing it through the sweat on my sticky skin. After a while, I stop and sit down and look out over the water. On the other side is Europe. Somewhere over there is him. And somewhere over there, a different version of me.

_ _ _

When I get back, Mom tells me to shower and set the table. At five, we sit down, settling in for a long night of reenacting the Jews’ escape from slavery in ancient Egypt, which is supposed to be an act of liberation, but somehow with Mom and Grandma glowering at each other, it always winds up feeling just like more oppression. At least the adults can get drunk. You have to down, like, four glasses of wine during the night. I, of course, get grape juice, in my own crystal carafe. At least I usually do. This time when I go to drink my first sip of juice after the first blessing, I almost choke. It’s wine. I think it’s a mistake, except Grandma catches my eye and winks.

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,