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

tears.
    Daniel straightened, his eyes filling, too. “You’re nice with him.”
    â€œOne is easier than two,” she shrugged, laying the bottle’s nipple against Noam’s lips. “Nothing can prepare you for two.” She slipped it in his mouth and he grasped the bottle and began to suck, sighing and shuddering. “There,” she crooned. “What a clever boy.” She looked evenly at Daniel. “Grandchildren are easier than your own, too,” she said.
    She was conceding something, Daniel realized. He fixed his eyes on Noam’s working cheeks, arms hugging his chest. “Mom,” he whispered. “How am I going to survive this?”
    Her face broke and sagged, and then composed itself. She spoke to him sharply. “By getting up every morning and putting one foot in front of the other, that’s how. By faking it, until it gets real again. That’s what we’re all going to do.”
    â€œOkay,” Daniel said in a small voice.
    â€œAnd by taking care of these children. Listen.” Her voice had lowered, become conspiratorial. “We will not let those Grossmans take them. I won’t have them raised in that house.”
    â€œOne step at a time, Mom,” Daniel said. “Let’s get through the shiva.” He was suddenly dying to get away from this conversation before it got too specific. “There’s no milk in the house. I’m going to go out and get some.”
    Lydia nodded. “And while you’re out, see if you can find something better than that awful Nescafé, okay?”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œAnd what about some cookies, at least, for the shiva?”
    â€œI don’t think so, Mom,” he said. “We have to trust Shoshi on this one.” She had told them—as Daniel had assumed—that, according to custom, the family doesn’t provide food for the shiva, that the visitors feed them instead.
    He found his sandals and wallet, and looked for the key to Joel and Ilana’s car for a long time, rummaging through every kitchen drawer, thrumming with the memory of Ilana’s periodic tantrums, her bellowing, “I can’t go on living in such a shit hole!” It occurred to him that Joel must have had their car keys with him, and there followed a moment in which Daniel tried and failed to ward off the thought that the bomb’s impact had driven the keys through Joel’s pockets and into the flesh of his thighs, mashing them into his bones. A little starburst of horror went off in his chest, and he had to sit down. A few minutes passed, and he stood again and looked into the open drawer, which was spilling over with lightbulbs, batteries, hair ties, stamps, pens, and paper clips. Suddenly, his eyes lit miraculously upon a single car key, marked with a tag that said extra car key . He held it up with two fingers, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.
    He closed the front door quietly on his way out. He was glad to leave his mother with the baby; she was being a marvel of strength, he thought, but if she didn’t have the children to take care of, she’d probably never be able to get out of bed again. She clearly assumed that she and Sam were going to take them, and for a moment Daniel regretted that Joel and Ilana hadn’t made that happen. And yet it was hard to imagine that she and Sam would be thrilled to take on two little kids at their age. He considered calling Joel’s lawyer, Assaf Schwartz. He, Daniel, sure as hell wasn’t going to be the person who broke the news. Let his parents’ wrath descend upon a neutral person. He looked at his watch, and then realized he’d see Assaf at the shiva.
    HE DROVE DOWN THE narrow street toward the center of the neighborhood, flooded by sense memory—sun, stone, squeaking iron gates, narrow streets, little stores like caves crammed with goodies. Last September, he’d spent ten days with Joel and