the worn black leather wallet, where she found sixty dollars and a Diners Club credit card, behind a plastic folder full of photographs of a woman who had to be Mrs. Breedlove, several small Breedloves, and a chocolate lab, by far the best-looking of the bunch.
She tucked forty dollars into her pocket, and put lipstick on her lips without meeting her own eyes in the mirror. On her way back to the table, she dropped the wallet on the floor and kicked it toward the bar, confident that one of the other patrons, or Tangier’s single weary waitress would discover it and give it back. “I’m so sorry,” she said, picking up her jacket, which she’d draped over the back of her chair, “but I forgot I need to pick my mother up at the synagogue tonight. It’s the anniversary of my father’s death,” she said, to sympathetic murmurs from Marcy and Liz, and a disappointed frown from Mr. Breedlove.
Outside, it was sleeting sideways, a wicked wind blowing off Lake St. Clair. Bethie shivered, pulling her coat closed, tugging her hat down over her ears. Forty dollars wasn’t enough to pay Jo back, or even pay for a plane ticket back to London. But it would be enough for a one-way bus ticket to San Francisco. Dev had talked about California like the promised land, where it was always sunny, where it never snowed, where the Man wouldn’t hassle you for burning a little rope. The next morning, she went to work as usual, but she left early, claiming debilitating cramps. She took the bus back home, and in the empty house, she found her sister’s rucksack, gathering dust in the rear of their closet. Her blue-and-white dress still hung there, the pretty dress she’d brought on her visit to campus, the one she’d been wearing the night she’d met Dev. She left it hanging there, filling Jo’s rucksack with the clothes that still fit her, underwear and bras and socks, a few books, a toothbrush and a comb, and walked out the door toward the bus station, and California, and whatever new life awaited her there.
Jo
L’chaim!” roared three hundred wedding guests, as Denny Ziskin’s heel came smashing down to shatter a napkin-wrapped glass.
Denny raised his arms in triumph, flushed with pleasure at the feat of breaking the glass, and of marrying Shelley Finkelbein. The crowd stomped and clapped and began to sing “Siman Tov U’Mazel Tov,” and Denny grabbed Shelley’s hand and danced her down the aisle, toward the reception hall doors, behind which, Jo knew, four thousand dollars’ worth of delicacies awaited, including an ice sculpture of a Star of David, grapefruits topped with maraschino cherries to be served with a flaming brandy sauce, prime ribs of beef, twice-baked potatoes, a three-foot-long challah, and a reproduction of the Temple Mount constructed from chopped liver, olives, and carrot and celery sticks.
Jo was under the chuppah, wearing a bridesmaid’s gown of apricot-colored satin with a white satin sash, white Mary Jane platform shoes, and a white headband in her curled and sprayed hair. She was holding Shelley’s bouquet, in addition to her own. Shelley had given her a small, sad smile when she’d handed it over, before turning to the rabbi and taking Denny’s hand. The bouquet was made of orchids and delphiniums and hydrangeas, all winter-white, and Jo had wanted to throw it, hard, preferably at Shelley’s face, but she’d promised to behave herself. Her presence was the price that Shelley had exacted for giving Jo the name of a doctor who could help Bethie. “I’ll tell you,” Shelley had said when Jo had called, “but you have to be my bridesmaid.”
Jo felt like she’d swallowed a stone. “No,” she blurted. “Why?”
“Because I don’t have any girl friends,” Shelley had snapped, with a flash of her old spirit. “If you’ll remember, I wasn’t spending a lot of time senior year with my old sorority sisters.”
Jo, who remembered exactly where Shelley had been spending her time, hadn’t answered. “Denny was a Sammy. He’s got eight fraternity brothers he wants to be his groomsmen. Plus his real brothers, plus his cousins,” Shelley said. “I’ve got to come up with some more gals.” Her voice had softened. “And I miss you.”
I miss you, too, Jo wanted to say. I miss you, I love you, I’ll love you forever, I never stopped. Instead, she swallowed and said in a stiff voice, “If that’s what you want, I’ll do it.”
On the Thursday before the