“You look like you had a nice outing,” Maryann said, when I returned to the brick bosom of the Golda Meir House. She eyed the bag. “Where’d you go for lunch?” I told them Barry’s Deli, with my daughter, Mimi. Murmured approval from the girls. We were a sturdy group; I wanted to think that. Good for a few years yet; I wanted to think that, too. Stiff, all of us, except for Lisa, who could still sit on the floor and cross her legs, yogi style. Things were hardening where they shouldn’t (arteries) and softening and crumbling where they shouldn’t (bones) but you had to get beyond that. You had to enjoy what you had before it dwindled into nothingness. Seeing Mimi, my daughter, does that to me—makes me wonder if I could have made her cheerier if I was cheerier myself.
“Pascal went out with his son,” Letitia said. She was a peppy one, and in her short plaid pleated skirt and tights, she could have passed for a high school cheerleader. If you looked at her from the back. And didn’t look at her waist. Her hair was thick, and she kept it a dusky blonde. Actually, looking at her did make you feel better.
“They went to the West Newton Cinema. The Israel film festival is there. Everything’s in Hebrew with subtitles.” This from Maya.
“His son could fill in anything that the subtitles leave out,” Maryann said. Pascal’s son was the cantor at the synagogue down the street,...
Subscribe now to keep reading
Please enter your email to log in or create a new account.