May We Be Forgiven

stopped.”
    “And what did your husband say?”
    “He wasn’t there,” she says, “which only made matters worse.”
    “Where was he?”
    “Good question,” she says, and says no more. “There was no excuse,” she says.
    “None,” I say.
    “The last time I saw you was at your father’s funeral,” she repeats her line from earlier.
    “Can you help me with something?” I pull out the family tree. “We need to fill this out.”
    “Fill out a family tree—are you going to pay me for my time? Should I be compensated in some way?”
    “I brought you borscht,” I say. She makes a dismissive gesture and moves her chair closer to mine, so she can see the forms and my yellow legal pad of notes.
    “How old are you, Aunt Lillian?”
    “Older than I look; I’m eighty-eight but am told I pass for mid-seventies.”
    Together we fill out the family tree. At one point she brings over a couple of old family photo albums, the physical evidence, and goes from page to page, spilling the beans about everyone. “Your father had a lot of issues about masculinity.”
    “Are you saying you think he was a closet case?”
    She lifts her shoulders and makes a face. “Who knows what anyone is or isn’t.”
    “Were there any criminals in the family?” I ask.
    “Oh sure,” she says. “Plenty. There was Uncle Bernie, who got stabbed to death in a card game.”
    “By who?”
    “No one ever wanted to say.”
    “And what happened to Aunt Bea?”
    “Dead,” she says. “And you know she had three children, none of them ever lived to be more than four years old; they called it crib death, but your mother and I weren’t so sure—we never left any of you alone with her.”
    “Really, that seems unlikely; Jews don’t kill their children, just drive them crazy.”
    “Trouble runs in the family,” she says.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Your father’s temper. Are you such a goody-goody? You thought your mother had a nose job; your father punched her.”
    I know exactly what she’s talking about, and she’s entirely right—my mother broke her nose, but I thought she’d been in some kind of accident.
    “Why?”
    “Who knows,” Lillian says. “Sometimes he just exploded.”
    “This is not what I expected.”
    “Your parents protected you and your brother. Your uncle Louie was another one, a nogoodnik always trying to make a deal. And his wife, what did she know, carrying on with the accountant from the temple.”
    “The guy with the bumps—like blisters or warts?” I say, again dimly recalling.
    “They were fatty tumors, and he was a very nice man, nicer than your Louie, but that doesn’t make it right. He was married. His wife was a clubfoot mute; he won her in a poker game.”
    I can’t help but laugh.
    “I fail to see the humor. He loved her, took very good care of her, and they had four children.”
    “Do you remember that we used to celebrate the High Holy Days together, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and then, suddenly, we didn’t?” I ask.
    “Yes,” she says. “Of course. It’s all about matzoh balls.” Lillian pauses and then looks at me, filled with pity, frustration, contempt. “Why can’t you take responsibility for what your family did? I was hoping you were coming to apologize.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “For what?”
    “For whatever it was that you felt happened that wronged you—I am sorry. Very sorry.”
    “I’m not sure you mean it.”
    “Well, I’m not sure I understand exactly what happened, but the fact that you’re hurt—I’m very sorry for. I came with an open heart. I can’t exactly apologize for something I didn’t do.”
    “You came because you had nowhere else to go. If things were going great, we never would have heard from you.”
    I am not feeling very well. Her accusations, the tension, the whole damn day with the trip into the city to get the soup, the drive out here, the fatigue, the finding out, all of it has been a lot—too much. “Aunt Lillian, I should go now, but if you’d like, I’ll come again.”
    “It’s not necessary,” Lillian says. “Give your mother my best. Where is she?” she asks as though it’s slipped her mind.
    “She’s in a home.”
    “And what condition is she in?”
    “She seems to be improving.”
    “Tell her I’m sorry about the soup; cooking the balls in water first or in the soup is fine—in the end, what the hell does it matter?”
    “Thank you,” I say. “I’ll tell her. By the way, she