Motherless Child

Nine days before the bat mitzvah of their daughter Rebecca, what Hannah and David had dreaded most since Rebecca’s birth came to pass. Hannah returned home from work before David, catching the 5:52 from the city instead of her usual train, the 6:16. When Rebecca was younger and Hannah arrived home early, they fussed together over dinner. In those days, Rebecca loved to cook, and, on Sunday afternoons, she helped her mother fill the oven with sweets and the kitchen with aromas, their favorite being brownies from a recipe which predated prefabricated mixes with artificial flavoring and preservatives, a recipe which, according to Hannah’s immigrant grandmother, had helped to assimilate a young child to the alien world of New York’s Lower East Side. In those days, with ingredients spread on the counter, latkes sizzling on the stove or chicken roasting in the oven, Hannah was as close to Rebecca as any mother could be to her daughter.

For the reception after the bat mitzvah service, Hannah had solicited Rebecca’s help with the baking: rugelach, mandel bread, honey cake, chocolate babka, and a challah for the HaMotzi prayer. Hannah still teased   Rebecca about her first attempt at baking brownies, so hard from over-baking they could have been used as a slab for supporting a pyramid. “Can’t,” Rebecca had snapped. “I have to tweet with my BFFs.”

Now Hannah yelled down the hall, “I’m home, hon.”

A bass line thumped through the closed door of Rebecca’s bedroom. One of her BFFs had loaned her two CDs by a Texas...