Korach

They assembled against Moses and Aaron, and said to them, “You take too much upon yourselves, for the entire congregation are all holy, and the Lord is in their midst.”        

                                                             Korach, 16–3

Melissa’s mother was dead, siblings scattered in distant towns, her childhood nothing she wanted to revisit, so friends, she would say, were her family. She would pick you up from the airport at night when she had to work the next day, she would bring soup and vitamins when you were sick, she never talked behind your back and if other people did she set them straight.

Thea Lieb she had known since their waitressing days, when they were both single with artsy aspirations. She saw Thea in whatever play she was in, no matter how small the part; Thea read her poems.. When Thea, now Lieb-Feinstein, had trouble getting pregnant, Melissa was in her first year of law school, but she drove her for shots and ultrasounds, and hosted the baby shower with Laura Beth and Thea’s sister Gaby, their jaws sore from blowing up balloons. The man Melissa married (at thirty-six, the last of their group) was Thea’s husband’s colleague at the university. At the wedding Thea gave a toast: to the old-fashioned fix-up date. During their still regular phone calls they mulled over vicissitudes and about one day vacationing together (after Thea and Allan’s children were grown). Richard didn’t want children and Melissa concurred; the oldest of four, she’d done more, she said, than her share of childrearing....