Page 44 of Counting Backwards

After emitting a frustrated huff, I climbed out of the car too, grabbing the cheesecake we’d picked up at the bakery on our way to the Midtown Tunnel. The gravel crunched under my sneakers as I scrambled to catch up to Vance. I’d misjudged the day’s weather,and the cool March air made me shudder under my denim jacket. I reached the top step just as the front door swung open, revealing Vance’s cousin Dalia and her three-year-old daughter, Sadie.

“You’re here!” Dalia held out her arms in apparent joy. Even with her blond hair and fair complexion, Vance’s cousin still looked so much like him. She had the same heart-shaped face with its broad forehead and cheekbones, the same full lips and button nose, and the same penetrating stare that could make a person feel like they mattered more than anyone else on earth. I liked to joke that Dalia was simply “hot-girl Vance.” Except, looking at Dalia now, I realized how long it had been since Vance had fixed me with that signature gaze, the look that said nothing other than me was on his mind. It brought more clearly into focus how much our relationship had changed since I’d stopped trying to fit so neatly into his idea of perfection.

I pasted a broad smile on my face and gushed, “This house is enormous!”

Dalia’s movie star–handsome husband, Yuval, appeared in the foyer behind them, an unopened can of artisanal seltzer in his hand.

“It took you two long enough,” he said in his thick Israeli accent. “Six months since we moved, and only just now you come?” He smiled to show he was teasing, pushing the door wider and ushering us inside.

After Dalia took the bakery box from my hands, I bent down toward Sadie.

“Hey, sweet girl.” I tugged lightly on one of her brown braids. “Will you show me all the best parts of your new house?”

“I’m getting a new baby,” the girl answered.

“Oh?” I looked up at Dalia.

Dalia smiled and nodded, putting a hand to her still-flat abdomen.

“It’s early days still, but... yeah. I guess we’re having another one.” She shrugged like she didn’t even know how it had happened.

“That’s the best news!” I tried so hard to sound genuine despite the wave of jealousy in my gut. As I wrapped Dalia in a tight hug, I was horrified by my selfish, immature reaction to her happy news. I marveled at how everywhere I looked, every last thing suddenly seemed to be about babies. God seemed to be taunting me, making me think about reproduction all day every day, all while withholding the grand prize. Maybe it really was karma, a curse on my family. I’d never been into supernatural ideas, but current circumstances had me reconsidering.

“Mazels.” Vance reached out to fist-bump Yuval. “That’s awesome for you guys.” His smile looked sincere, even as he seemed to be avoiding my eyes.

After a grand tour of the home, including the multiple empty bedrooms that I imagined would soon be filled with a whole gaggle of button-nosed babies, we all settled into the kitchen to enjoy the spread Dalia had prepared for lunch.

Yuval sat beside Sadie, carving her grilled cheese sandwich into bite-sized pieces and trying to convince the cherub-faced girl to eat. Meanwhile, I listened to Vance and Dalia at the other side of the table, catching up on the various members of their extended family. In between bites of avocado salad and poached salmon, Dalia told Vance all about how Uncle Mort was dating a woman half his age and their cousin Lydia was finally moving back from Sweden. Dalia’s younger sister, Naomi, had just accepted a position as an exhibition manager at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC.

At the reference to the Holocaust, I tensed. I shouldn’t have been surprised that someone would mention it. The Holocaust had a way of coming up at nearly every single visit with Vance’s family, whether as a passing mention or as material for yet another philosophical debate. Typically, I might chime in to make a comment or offer my own opinions, but now I felt like an interloper, atraitor. Long ago, I assured Vance that I’d be comfortable raising our children in the Jewish faith—but suddenly I wondered if I even had that right, given who I came from and everything he’d set in motion.

“The Holocaust Museum,” Vance said, and I assumed he was going to mention the ways he’d collaborated with that institution for a few episodes of his podcast. The museum’s international tracking system was a valuable tool for hunting down documentation pertaining to art and other heirlooms that had been stolen from families. But instead, Vance sighed. “That’ll be pretty rough stuff, being confronted by the images in their exhibits day in and day out. It’s different than just talking about it. Some of those photos...” He let out a loud exhale, shaking his head at the notion. “I’d never be able to face all that horror on a regular basis.”

His words reconfirmed my decision to keep my secret to myself. I had no other choice. “Sounds like the perfect job for Naomi though,” he continued. “She was always the most committed to our heritage out of all the cousins.”

“Says the man who refuses to drink from anything other than his grandfather’s sixty-year-old kiddush cup at Jewish holidays,” Dalia said. Then she lowered her voice to imitate what Vance always said: “Because it’s what Saba would have done.”

“Touché.” Vance laughed. “Well, still, this position makes so much more sense than the taxidermy she was doing at Natural History.”

“Right?” Dalia popped a grape into her mouth. “Her senior thesis was on all the ways the world would have been different if the Holocaust had never happened. My dear sis has always been a crusader.”

“I’m well aware,” Vance said between bites of fish. Then he finally looked at me across the table. “Remember when you first met her?”

Naomi had been the only member of the extended family who’d taken issue with Vance dating a non-Jew, grilling me about my background and my plans for our future children. Vance had felt bad about his cousin’s uncouth behavior, explaining over and over that their grandparents’ experience in the Holocaust had traumatized the entire family. I didn’t want him to start talking about all of that again, the specifics of what his grandparents had endured, the stories he’d grown up hearing.

“But what about you?” I asked Dalia, trying to change the subject. “What’s the latest in your life? I mean, besides...” I motioned toward Dalia’s stomach.

“Actually,” Dalia said, her shoulders slumping, “I’m having an existential crisis, I think.” She laughed lightly as she reached over to snag a piece of Sadie’s grilled cheese for herself. “I finally found a job out here, but now with the new baby coming, I’m thinking of taking off a few years.” She looked at Yuval, who nodded encouragingly.

“I keep telling her to do whatever she wants,” he said. “It is her life, so it must be her decision. You agree?”

My eyes shot over to Vance, but he was happily spreading cream cheese on a bagel and nodding along.

“I just don’t know,” Dalia said, grimacing. “If I’m gone for too long, I’m afraid I won’t be able to find a position when I’m ready.”

“You just have to leave the right way,” Vance said assuredly. “Shore up your contacts now, while you’re still there, and then you could take some time away without too much detriment to your résumé. Just remember that you have a very marketable skill. I mean, people always need nurses, right?”

“You would think,” Dalia answered. She reached for a platter of roasted vegetables in the center of the table and began serving herself some eggplant. “It certainly feels like the nurses run everything, like we’re the only ones who actually know what’s going on with any given patient.”