Read Online All I Love and Know by Judith Frank - Free Book Online Page A

feeling came over him, and a sense of dread that hardly got its footing before his awareness broke over him and crushed him with such ruthlessness he could only cower and whimper before it. The morning after Joel’s funeral, he lay in bed, his arms thrown over his head, whispering the only word he could think of in any language: Please .
    He could sense that he was in Jerusalem, and that it was warm. His undershirt stuck to his back. He tried to bring Joel’s face to his mind, but he couldn’t. His throat cramped with the effort not to cry and awaken the sleeping man and child beside him.
    He lay there for a while, his breathing ragged, the sound of sobbing roaring in his ears. His consciousness began to wash over the sound Joel ; and the idea of Joel, Joel’s shining essence, came to him. Joel as he was, all at once, gorgeous in full, imperfect personhood, and not as Daniel, swayed by his own ego and needs, had thought of him over the years, as too this or too that. He imagined himself holding his brother, their hearts clamoring against each other, and the mayhem in his mind became something clearer and sweeter, a grief that pierced him through.
    He lay there till it subsided, till he felt himself to have been washed ashore, half-dead, panting. He felt the living bodies beside him sigh and stir. His ears made out the rush of traffic on the far side of the valley, and closer, the voices of neighboring women talking over their balconies. And then the baby’s sharp wail.
    He rose quietly and closed the bedroom door behind him, walked barefoot to the kids’ bedroom. His mother was up, walking around the small cluttered room in a housedress with the baby over her shoulder, patting him and murmuring, “I know, I know, honey, I know.” Noam was wearing only a diaper, and his red face was covered with tears and snot.
    â€œHow long has he been up?” Daniel asked, his voice hoarse. He cleared his throat.
    â€œSince about five. Close the door, will you? The whole house will wake up.”
    Daniel closed it. “Has he eaten?”
    â€œI tried to give him some Cheerios, but he wouldn’t eat. I’m trying to get him to at least take a bottle,” Lydia said.
    â€œDid you change him?”
    â€œOf course,” she said. “I have some experience at this, in case you’ve forgotten.”
    An old skepticism wormed its way up Daniel’s throat. He knew that twin babies had been hard for her; she loved the idea of motherhood better than the actuality. He and Joel had always joked that she couldn’t relate to them till they were speaking in sentences with subordinate clauses. Her own mother had died suddenly during Lydia’s pregnancy—one of those unlucky people who go into a hospital for a simple procedure and never come out again—and by the time he and Joel were born, Lydia was wrung out by months of grief.
    â€œCould you pick up some of this crap on the floor?” she asked. “There seems to be the entire contents of a toy ark. I’ve already stubbed my toe three times.”
    Daniel stooped and began collecting Lego pieces and small animal figures fused together in male and female pairs, tossing them into a big plastic toy box in the corner of the room. Above the crib was one of those black-and-white mobiles that were supposed to be good for a baby’s development in some way, but whose elemental faces made Daniel shudder. Noam was screaming and arching backward, and Lydia was struggling to hang on to him.
    â€œDo you want me to take him?” Daniel asked.
    â€œNo,” Lydia said over the baby’s crying. “Thank God Ilana weaned him already. That would have been an utter horror.” She sat down on the rocking chair in the corner, wrestled him into a reclining position on her lap, and offered him the bottle again. He twisted his face away. “I know, bubbie,” Lydia said softly, her eyes becoming shiny with