way Sarah hadn’t mentioned Bethie’s spouse, although Bethie was sure that Jo had noticed. Sarah had gotten very quiet after Bethie told her that she and Harold had gotten married in a small ceremony at City Hall in Atlanta. “I’m glad you’ve finally settled down,” was all she’d said, but Bethie knew that having a daughter married to a non-Jew and black man had not been a part of Sarah’s vision for her good girl. Still, she’d sent a wedding gift, a set of crystal wineglasses from Hudson’s. She’d hosted Harold’s family for holidays, and had visited them in Atlanta, and even if she’d never seemed entirely comfortable around Harold, Bethie recognized that her mother was trying.
I told my Drs. “no more.” They gave me medicine for the pain. It didn’t hurt much. I am sorry.
Here, there was a space, as if Sarah had paused to gather her thoughts, to figure out what it was that she was sorry for, and what else she needed to say.
. . . for any way I might have failed you. There is a Will in the safe-deposit box (key in drawer in bedside table). Freddie Barash is Lawyer. Left $ to Grandkids, Jewelry and Keepsakes to Bethie, except a few things marked for friends.
“Well,” Jo murmured, “that’s pretty cut-and-dried.” She looked sideways at her sister.
Be good to each other, was the last thing Sarah had written, before Love, Mother.
Jo folded up the pages and slipped them into the envelope. For a moment, neither of them spoke, and when they did, they both said “I’m sorry” at precisely the same instant. Bethie started laughing, then the laughter turned into a sob. She sniffled, wiping her eyes, and looked at her sister. “What are you sorry for?”
“For not being around when you needed me,” Jo said. “For not being there when you were in trouble.”
Bethie wiped dust off the bottle of schnapps, uncapped it, raised it to her lips, and took a swallow. Nine years ago, when they’d had their fight, she would have given anything for Jo to say those words, for Jo to take some responsibility for what had happened to Bethie. Now, between the therapy she’d gone through and Harold’s perspective, she could see it differently. You were kids, Harold would tell her, in the deep, resonant voice that made even an observation that they were out of paper towels sound as portentous as a reading from the Bible. Not even kids: teenagers. Of course Jo was all up in her own head. That’s the nature of the beast. And your mom was probably just trying to keep the boat from sinking. Bethie’s therapist, whose name was Allison Shoemaker and whose voice was fluty and sweet, had urged her to consider the most benign interpretation. Maybe she genuinely didn’t notice, Dr. Shoemaker had suggested. When she found out, she behaved appropriately, right? She tried to protect you. She let you know that she cared.
“It’s fine,” Bethie said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I could have done more.”
“Maybe,” Bethie allowed. “But, for that to happen, you would have needed to know what was going on. And you didn’t.”
“If I’d been around more, I would have noticed.” Lynnette Bobeck, Jo’s teenage distraction, had come to the shiva. She’d put on forty pounds since high school and dyed her hair an unbecomingly brassy shade of blond. Her oldest son was in college, a sophomore at the U of M, as hard as that was to believe. Bethie took another swallow of schnapps, wincing at the burn. “Ugh, what is this supposed to taste like? Mouthwash in hell?”
“Cinnamon.” Jo extended her hand, wiggling her fingers, and Bethie passed her the bottle. Jo drank, winced, gasped, and said, “Ow.”
“I know.” Bethie looked out into the darkness, the velvety sky, the faint glow of the stars visible through the layer of pollution. “Do you think you’ll miss Mom? She was so hard on you.”
Jo drank again, coughed, passed Bethie the bottle, and said, “She was hard on both of us.” Bethie nodded. Every December, she’d gotten a chance to see a different kind of mother/daughter relationship at Harold’s house, just a mile to the south of Alhambra Street, a significantly bigger and more impressive house than the one she’d grown up in. She and Harold would visit every Christmas. The Jefferson house was always full of music, raised voices, the smell of something being braised or fried or simmered. Harold’s mother, Irene, doted on her daughters and her grandchildren.