And then the moon, too, an impurity, and the stars — they’ve all come in pairs. Their house, so lit, the world entire. And everything around it, surrounding, forget it. Banished, unto the basement, unfinished. They disperse, the sisters one by one, each of them ten, a hundred almost, or so it appears to Batya, to her own hallway, or room — except hers, soon not to be — heading upstairs, to sit, upstairs-upstairs, lying in wait, peering out over the yard and the drive through their windows that won’t open, God forbid they should fall from; they’re brushing each other’s hair with their mother’s brushes, combs, they’ve had to wait until she’d finished with them. All except Batya, her tears dried to the quality of the glass she’d shattered, these shards from her eyes: our grief burdens, as it’s converted unto the nature of the responsible sin. She’s itchy, she’s scratched up her face and it’s red and hurts awfully. Now she attempts to sit in the livingroom, the familyroom, the den of her father and his animal life: struggling, shvitzy and angry, barely able to get herself up on a sofa, which Israel calls a couch or else Hanna does and Israel a sofa — the fireplace ledge. The candles are shining from just down the hall, and Batya’s thinking if only to herself why this happens every Friday with the sticks and the wicks and her sisters, it’s so together and pleasant and, she doesn’t have the word, the ideas, but why not every night, every day three times with meals and a cookie, a cupcake. Warming, though confused, babied with hope despite the burn of her cheeks. Atop a table of stacked bills, clipped receipts, President Resident, addressees: Mister Hanna, Misses Israel. A book she can’t read that holds prayers her head knows, a siddur. And a bowl of what’s to her fruit. Batya consoling, fists an apple that’s wax, bites, then replaces it, teethmarks first.
Simple enough, he thought: the instructions had been to buy bread, those were the rules, his engagement, the vows.
She asked, buy some challah — ceremonial bread.
For motzi, the cerement of our hunger — the burial in the mouth of the loaves, two of them, one for each language — and how he repeats this to himself, the request’s order, silently but still in the voice of his wife: on your way home, if it’s no trouble, she’d said, no trouble, she’d added, but not a conditional.
Not too much.
Still, it’ll make him later, this stopping here, twenty minutes out of his way and then shul, don’t forget.
She hadn’t baked. She hadn’t baked? There are fish in the sea and chickens in the air, and she hadn’t baked — it’s unnatural, not normal, it’s not like her, what’s wrong. There’s a kid in the womb, flyingthings in flight and things that swim swimmingly, and then what, nothing at all in the oven, the stove, cooling atop the counter, what gives. And so the order, the request as if for his complicity in a shirking that’s only hers if companioned: buy challah, she’d said, don’t forget as I don’t forgive as thoroughly or as quickly as you; after his shower, while he was dressing, suiting, tying his tie, before he left for work in the morning, before work, at work she’d left with Loreta a message she’d left him before she left for home for the day, the week, the year, before early evening, approaching the dark that’s only as constant as him, he’s flattering, as sure as the sun in its nightly crash to the pavement — stopping outside the storefront, the window display, arranging in its reflection his hairs left, wilted weeds like at the trunks rooting the sidewalk landscaped. He browses past the baskets empty of bread so late in the coming — through to his image, thinking an olderyoungish middleaged: hope, there’s still a little crust left for me yet.
Inside, behind the counter, an aproned mensch about to untie, fold, sweep crumbs, close up, and head home — just a moment, though, wait up, a mitzvah Israel’s asking, lawyerly arguing the Closed for Business he’s earned it, telling and tsking his merit, all these long years a loyal customer fast with exact change and his wife, how he should know him by now and this late, he’s just saying, Mister Baker with the apron and hat and three doughy chins, the floury cheeks, it would pay to know him here every week, and so why not a dozen egg kichel thrown in for free, every once in a while, just asking just asking, two loaves, if you have them, I’m in too much of a rush.
I’m sorry, the baker’s saying, I don’t remember you, Mister…
Israelien, he says, I’m just saying is all, having my fun — and now as if in apology: my wife, she usually bakes.
My wife, he says, doesn’t even know how to cook. I should tell you — feel lucky; except that I’m sorry, all I have left are two loaves.
I’ll take them, how much?
But they’re for me, my wife and my — tell you what, I’ll break with you bread.
Here’s a loaf, one of mine. You can always cut it in two.
