Saving Elijah

other faiths who would also disagree."
    He smiled. "But, thank God you aren't in that situation. If you were, I would tell you then what I told you just now. But I wouldn't tell you what to do. Judaism teaches us that we are responsible for ourselves, Dinah."
    "I know that, Rabbi." I stood up.
    "Perhaps if you turn your back on this demon and refuse to listen anymore, it will go away from you."
    "Perhaps." He had helped me, I felt it, although I still didn't have a clue how I would begin to do what he was suggesting. "Well, I really have taken enough of your time now."
    We walked toward the parking lot in silence, and when we got to my car, the rabbi said, "I'm sure you know the saying that there are some things that we as human beings cannot change, and there are other things that we can. And sometimes the hardest thing for us is to know which are which." He smiled.
    "Come see me again sometime, all right?"

twenty-nine
    When I came back from the synagogue, my mother was in the backyard with Elijah. The sun was still bright and hot, and they were on the grass in their bathing suits, playing ring-around-a-rosy. For a woman of seventy, my mother looked pretty good in her bathing suit, even with her hair soaking wet.
    "All fall down," Elijah said, then the two collapsed on the ground, laughing.
    The thought crossed my mind that she'd never played that way with me. But of course I knew she had.
    "Mommy!" Elijah ran toward me.
    "Oh, Dinah, thank God you're back. I was thinking about calling the police."
    "I'm sorry, I got held up." I hoisted Elijah into my arms, slipping my hand under his buttocks. I realized that his bathing suit was wet. His hair, too.
    "Elijah, did you go in the pool?"
    He nodded, smiled. "Gramma took me."
    "You got him to go in the pool?"
    My mother grabbed her sunglasses from the picnic table and put them on her face. "Nothing to it. Right, Elijah?"
    "Right."
    "Well now, that's wonderful. But why now, Elijah?"
    He looked at me for a moment, then said, "Because it was time."
    "Time?"
    "Flowers can't bloom in the winter when the ground is all cold, and the worms are sleeping."
    I stared. When I found my voice again, I said, "So show me how you swim, okay?"
    "Not now, Tuddy's inside. I left him." He scrambled out of my arms and ran to the door.
    My mother put her arm around my shoulders as we walked toward the house. "I was really beginning to worry."
    "I'm sorry I missed the swimming triumph—it really is, you know." I stopped walking. "Why did you come, Mom?"
    "At first I came because your father was angry with me. I wanted to prove to him that I had been helpful to you when Elijah was sick. But really I think I came just because I love you. I want you to be happy. It was time, just like Elijah said. How about our wonderful boy?"
    I smiled. "Do you think your mother wanted you to be happy?"
    She shrugged. "My mother didn't care two bits if I was happy, Dinah. Or any of us, your uncle Lee, even Marshall and Bernard. All she ever cared about was her dead child and her bottle."
    This was my mother's demon, perhaps as alive for her as mine was for me.
    She stopped walking, looked at me. "I know I was sometimes out of control when I was younger. It was just that I... I don't know, I was just so .. . hungry."
    Hungry. My mother had found the perfect word.

    *    *    *

    After my mother left that afternoon, I called Sam at work. He answered the phone himself. "Sam Galligan."
    "Hi, it's me. I wanted to tell you, Elijah finally went into the pool."
    He groaned. "Without me? Jesus, Dinah."
    "My mom came yesterday, she was here overnight. Today, I don't know how, she convinced him to go into the pool. Well, she may not have had to do much convincing—when I asked him why he went in he said it's like you can't have flowers blooming in the winter because the worms are all sleeping."
    "What in the world does that mean?"
    "I think it's his way of saying it was time."
    Sam made a whistling noise. "He sure is something, that kid of ours."
    "Will you meet us at Dr. Selson's office tomorrow?" We had a regular monthly checkup with the doctor scheduled for the next day.
    "Of course I will, Dinah. Elijah is my son."
    "Please come home, Sam. The children miss you. I miss you. I need you. We all do."
    "I miss you, too," he said.
    I lay down on my bed, exhausted. And I slept.

    *    *    *

    Elijah and I are on a boat, in the middle of a vast sea. The noonday sun is hot overhead, drenching us with warmth. We have