Bertrand Court Read Online Free PDF Page B

repose.
    Amy was the first to speak. “What spoon ? Why?”
    â€œFor another time, Amy.” Hannah continued to stare into the fire, and Maggie and Becca glanced at each other but said nothing.
    Only Amy looked at Hannah. “You robbed the dead?” she whispered.
    Hannah rubbed her eyes with her fists, like a baby, and when she removed her hands, a mascara-stained tear ran down her left cheekbone.
    â€œHoly shit, Hannah,” Amy said.
    â€œYeah, holy shit,” Hannah said.
    Becca stood up. “Game’s over, ladies.”
    Amy watched from her chair while Hannah and Maggie silently folded their shawls into neat squares, handed them back to Becca, and walked through the dewy grass to the kitchen and their sullied serving dishes. Amy had no platter to claim, so she stayed outside by the fire, wondering what the hell was happening to the Solonskys. Their mother, a stoic German Jew, was weeping into Hannah’s phone eight times a day, Eric the atheist had joined a synagogue where he said kaddish every morning before work, and Amy was burning quiches for a love interest. How well did Amy know her family? How well did she know herself? How well do you know anyone until you’ve seen them grieve?
    The flames faded while the cicadas whined and an airplane passed over Bertrand Court. Amy eased herself outof her chair. A shovel lay behind the fire pit. She grabbed it, scooped up the embers, and spread the ashes evenly before she sprinkled them with the last few drops of Hannah’s wine. It was time to take her sister home.

SYLVIA’S SPOON
    Hannah Solonsky, June 1992
    I steal a sterling silver baby spoon from my great-aunt Sylvia while her body, barely cold, rests under a blanket of disheveled earth at the Beth Shalom Cemetery. I do it in her kitchen, on impulse, while I’m looking for a teaspoon to stir my chamomile, seconds before my family begins reciting the mourner’s kaddish in my aunt’s living room. Yisgadal ve yiskadash shema rabah, amen.
    My mother, loud and tone-deaf, can’t even finish the prayer she’s so weepy. We all are. She enters the kitchen to put a handful of used Kleenex into the trash, and I slide the spoon further into my pocket. I run my fingers around the tiny bowl and up along the skinny handle to the tip, which is inscribed with the Hebrew letter hey . My name, Hannah Solonsky, begins with a hey ; this piece of flatware is my destiny. Besides, finders keepers.
    I imagine that this spoon has survived pogroms and a long passage to Ellis Island, and I want to siphon its fortitude for my baby. I’m thirteen weeks pregnant, my new record for not miscarrying. Every morning I pray from The Jewish Women’s Guide to Fertility , a book I would have snickered at two years ago. I suffer the indignity of progesterone suppositories — the added hormones make me throw up in my office trash can — and I avoid foods I ate and clothes I wore while unsuccessfully carrying babies one through three. I take pregnancy yoga classes to manage the stress from keeping it all straight.
    Danny can’t win. If he’s enthusiastic about the baby, I tell him not to jinx things. If he’s cautious, I interrogate him — a man of reason, not instinct — about his “true gut” on this pregnancy. My parents are no help; my mother worries so much that I end up comforting her, and my father changes the subject but then emails me the cell phone numbers of his old med school buddies who specialize in fertility. My siblings have always leaned on me, and they wouldn’t get it anyway. Eric is trying to mate, and Amy is consumed with being Amy. Most of my friends are reveling in their fecundity. I cling to this spoon and the hope that my dead aunt is taking care of my baby somewhere out there in the ether.
    On the flight home from the funeral, I watch the Milwaukee homes, adorned with pink flamingos and aboveground swimming pools, disappear into a