May We Be Forgiven

session?”
    “I’m hoping you’ll be able to fill out the form for me,” I say, nodding towards the mint-green sheet of paper I gave him when I came in. “It’s the psychiatric report for the Department of Social Services, asking if I’m fit to parent.”
    “Leave the form with me,” he says. “I should be able to complete it by the end of our next session.”
    “So the total cost is seven hundred and fifty dollars to get the form filled out?”
    “Is that a problem?” Tuttle asks.
    “No, I just want to be sure I understand.”
    Tuttle nods. “Same time next week?”

    D uring the day, when I’m not doing something for the kids, visiting my mother, working on the Nixon story project in Manhattan, or sitting at George’s desk trying to finish the book, I see Amanda.
    We meet in parking lots between errands. Amanda tells me what’s new in the grocery store—an expanded aisle of “ethnic” foods, more heat-and-eats, and that one of the checkout ladies has a heavy thumb on the produce scale. Amanda is a puzzle. I tell her that I wish I knew her better.
    Amanda says nothing.
    As I start to elaborate on my mother’s upcoming wedding, she cuts me off. “I’m really not interested in you as a person,” she says.
    As hurtful as it sounds, I don’t take it personally. I think she’s lying.

    I n the evening, while I’m repainting the upstairs bathroom, I talk with Nate on speakerphone.
    “Any further thoughts about the bar mitzvah?”
    “Yeah,” he says. “Let’s cancel it.”
    “No bar mitzvah?” I ask.
    “Yeah, I can’t go into the temple,” he says.
    “What about doing it somewhere else?” I dip the brush into the can of Benjamin Moore semi-gloss and sweep it across the wall.
    “Like where?”
    “Here at home?” I suggest. “I’ve been sprucing it up.”
    “She was killed at home,” he says flatly.
    “At a country club? Or hotel?” I dip the brush again.
    “Over-the-top awkward,” Nate says, “and besides, I think the rabbi is a jerk.”
    “Well, we should do something special. How about taking a trip?”
    “Like to Disney World?” Nate asks, and I remember that I am talking to a twelve-year-old.
    “I’m thinking something more substantive—a game changer.”
    “I don’t know,” Nate says. “The one place I’d like to go … is back to Nateville. I’m not sure I’ll ever get there.”
    “You’re twelve years old and worried you’ll never go there again.”
    “Don’t mock me,” he says.
    “So—you’d like to go to South Africa?”
    “I think so.”
    “Just to Nateville, or on a more expanded trip, like on a safari?”
    “A safari would be cool. We’d take Ashley?”
    “Of course.”
    “And Ricardo?”
    “If you like.”
    “Cool,” Nate says, seeming genuinely pleased.
    “Okay,” I say, standing back to look at my work so far. “I’ll see what I can find out.” The call waiting beeps; I say good night to Nate and take the call.
    “Your mother called my mother,” Jason says.
    “What happened to ‘hello’?” I say, stepping off the ladder.
    “It was all very pleasant until she invited my mother to her wedding and got upset when my mother said, ‘I already went to your wedding. Don’t you remember?’ And your mother said, ‘Of course I remember—I’m talking about now, I’m getting married again.’ Long story short, my mother thinks your mother is out of her mind.”
    My brush slips out of my hand and bounces across multiple surfaces before landing in the toilet. “She’s actually doing well; she met someone at the home,” I tell Jason as I fish the brush out of the bowl and shake it off.
    “Are you going to let her get married?”
    “I’m not sure that it’s entirely up to me.” I pause—it occurs to me that Lillian might know the fiancé. “Hey, could you ask your mother if she knows Bob Goldman? They all went to the same junior high, so it might ring a bell.”
    “You mean Bobby Goldman, Yetta Goldman’s baby brother?”
    “Maybe.”
    “He’s the one who was so bad as a kid; he flushed a rug down the toilet at the temple.”
    “I think he used to be into sports,” I say, as though somehow rug flushing could be considered sporty.
    “Goldman played professional ball for a season or two and then was a radio announcer under the name of Bob Gold, so no one would know he was Jewish.”
    “How do you know all that?”
    “Because when our parents were sitting around talking I actually listened. You and your