a car and all drive back together.”
“I’ll get to meet him,” I said stupidly.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “Or, you can do what a lot of people choose to do: just go through the motions.” She expelled a quick, ambiguous bark of a laugh.
The cabbie, I believe, hated her already, but when the meter tab came to twenty even, which she gave him, and then when she couldn’t find anything smaller for a tip and dug a quarter out of her pocket apologetically, he handed it back to her. “Ma’am, you need this more than I do.”
She turned briskly away from him. He popped the trunk without getting out, and we lifted out our own bags and hurried into the airport. “I’m really a good tipper, ordinarily! I really am!” she said. “I’m known for my good tips!” I nodded. I believed her, though she had yet to pay me a dime. I remembered a remark my often frugal father used to make: I only like to be gratuitous when it is absolutely necessary .
“There are no manners in the Midwest anymore,” Sarah said. “You have to go to the South. And even there it’s getting patchy.”
At the ticket counter they checked our IDs, Sarah keeping hers a little hidden from me, as if she disliked her picture. She stuck it quickly back into one of the many zippered pockets her burnt umber handbag contained. “This pocketbook has so many compartments, it’s hard to remember where you’ve put things,” she said. “It’s like an intelligence test.” I had only ever heard one other person use the word pocketbook instead of purse: my mother. “But it’s magical. There’s so much room. You can keep loading it up and discover so much you didn’t know was there! It’s like the stream of endless clowns that keeps coming out of the Volkswagen! Still, if I were my own mother? I’d have every zipper labeled.”
To me, Sarah herself was like a Volkswagen endlessly expelling clowns. “You have a mother?” I said. “I mean, your mother’s alive?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Awesome,” I said, in that peculiar way, I knew, our generation had of finding that everything either “sucked” or was “awesome.” We used awesome the way the British used brilliant: for anything at all. Perhaps, as with the British, it was a kind of antidepressant: inflated rhetoric to keep the sorry truth at bay.
“My mother and father had a real relationship,” she said.
“Well, they were married.”
“Anyone can get married. They had a relationship!”
“Do your parents like your restaurant?”
“My father died before he saw it. But he never liked to eat out. I once took him to a Benihana in New Jersey, but the sizzling hibachi table made him very jumpy. I think it conjured all these memories of the war and the firebombing of Tokyo. After that he refused to eat out with me. He would say, ‘Come see us! Your mother has made a beautiful kugel!’ He was a rich old man scared of the sizzle of a grill.”
“He was rich?”
“Well, sort of. Is your dad rich?” Her eyebrows arced and her eyes bugged out. We were in a dialogue that was about something other than what we were saying. At least I hoped so.
“People thought we were, but we weren’t,” I said. Actually, I wasn’t sure. I repeated the conventional wisdom. “Farmers aren’t rich. They have land but no money.” Actually, my father didn’t even have that much land. He had once stood on the porch and flung his arms out and said, “Someday, kids, all this will be yours.” But his knuckles had hit the porch supports. Even the porch wasn’t that big.
“Farmers are rich when they die,” I added.
“I suppose,” said Sarah. “I never think of anyone as rich when they die. I think of dead as about as poor as you can get.”
“Gate two, upstairs,” said the woman at the counter, handing us our boarding passes, and since we only had carry-on bags, we went directly upstairs, except that Sarah, seeing that no people were on the down escalator, decided to try to go up
“I’ll get to meet him,” I said stupidly.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “Or, you can do what a lot of people choose to do: just go through the motions.” She expelled a quick, ambiguous bark of a laugh.
The cabbie, I believe, hated her already, but when the meter tab came to twenty even, which she gave him, and then when she couldn’t find anything smaller for a tip and dug a quarter out of her pocket apologetically, he handed it back to her. “Ma’am, you need this more than I do.”
She turned briskly away from him. He popped the trunk without getting out, and we lifted out our own bags and hurried into the airport. “I’m really a good tipper, ordinarily! I really am!” she said. “I’m known for my good tips!” I nodded. I believed her, though she had yet to pay me a dime. I remembered a remark my often frugal father used to make: I only like to be gratuitous when it is absolutely necessary .
“There are no manners in the Midwest anymore,” Sarah said. “You have to go to the South. And even there it’s getting patchy.”
At the ticket counter they checked our IDs, Sarah keeping hers a little hidden from me, as if she disliked her picture. She stuck it quickly back into one of the many zippered pockets her burnt umber handbag contained. “This pocketbook has so many compartments, it’s hard to remember where you’ve put things,” she said. “It’s like an intelligence test.” I had only ever heard one other person use the word pocketbook instead of purse: my mother. “But it’s magical. There’s so much room. You can keep loading it up and discover so much you didn’t know was there! It’s like the stream of endless clowns that keeps coming out of the Volkswagen! Still, if I were my own mother? I’d have every zipper labeled.”
To me, Sarah herself was like a Volkswagen endlessly expelling clowns. “You have a mother?” I said. “I mean, your mother’s alive?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Awesome,” I said, in that peculiar way, I knew, our generation had of finding that everything either “sucked” or was “awesome.” We used awesome the way the British used brilliant: for anything at all. Perhaps, as with the British, it was a kind of antidepressant: inflated rhetoric to keep the sorry truth at bay.
“My mother and father had a real relationship,” she said.
“Well, they were married.”
“Anyone can get married. They had a relationship!”
“Do your parents like your restaurant?”
“My father died before he saw it. But he never liked to eat out. I once took him to a Benihana in New Jersey, but the sizzling hibachi table made him very jumpy. I think it conjured all these memories of the war and the firebombing of Tokyo. After that he refused to eat out with me. He would say, ‘Come see us! Your mother has made a beautiful kugel!’ He was a rich old man scared of the sizzle of a grill.”
“He was rich?”
“Well, sort of. Is your dad rich?” Her eyebrows arced and her eyes bugged out. We were in a dialogue that was about something other than what we were saying. At least I hoped so.
“People thought we were, but we weren’t,” I said. Actually, I wasn’t sure. I repeated the conventional wisdom. “Farmers aren’t rich. They have land but no money.” Actually, my father didn’t even have that much land. He had once stood on the porch and flung his arms out and said, “Someday, kids, all this will be yours.” But his knuckles had hit the porch supports. Even the porch wasn’t that big.
“Farmers are rich when they die,” I added.
“I suppose,” said Sarah. “I never think of anyone as rich when they die. I think of dead as about as poor as you can get.”
“Gate two, upstairs,” said the woman at the counter, handing us our boarding passes, and since we only had carry-on bags, we went directly upstairs, except that Sarah, seeing that no people were on the down escalator, decided to try to go up
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