Saving Elijah

of thinking. There might come a time when you want a man who can really understand the most basic things about you."
    Right, like you're an out-of-control screamer and Dad's a silent stone. But she wasn't screaming now. She was talking about this calmly.
    "Judaism isn't what's basic about me," I said. "Judaism isn't even basic about you."
    "You're wrong, Dinah. You think it isn't basic, but it is. Remember, this is an anti-Semitic world, and we're a hated people."
    "So?"
    "So when people fight, and married people do, sometimes you get so low, so out of control that you can forget yourself, and when that happens you might suddenly hear your husband say something you never thought he'd ever say—or even think, for that matter."
    I thought she was being one of those Jews who believe history teaches us nothing if not that anti-Semites lurk behind every door. As far as I was concerned, she was ambivalent at best about being Jewish. For example, she hadn't wanted me to have a prominent nose, even though it hadn't been all that prominent, which made her a hypocrite in my nineteen-year-old eyes.
    "I can't see anything like that happening to us," I said. "Sam doesn't have a mean bone in his body, let alone an anti-Semitic one. I love him."
    She sat back. "I know you do, Dinah. I can see that. It's just... well, sometimes love isn't enough."
    I didn't pursue it. I just wanted to get the weekend over with.
    And the next, which we spent chez Galligan, in a small crowded house with a cross over Sam's parents' bed, and religious art on the walls, about one step more sophisticated than Jesus on black velvet. Dinner was boisterous and homemade and plain, Irish soda bread, and corned beef and cabbage, and beer, lots of it. Sam winked at me during grace before the meal, and he called his father "Da," and it was obvious to me that Sam, the youngest in the family, was the golden boy, in fact the only one who'd made it through college, paid for mostly by a swimming scholarship. Sam's sister Anne was a hairdresser; Aiden worked in their father's lumberyard; and Tim, who'd started college, then quit and joined the marines, had survived a tour in Vietnam, gone back to a community college, and now worked in the lumberyard, too. Still, I never considered for a moment that this third-generation Jewish girl and this second-generation Irish boy were going to make it.
    "So, what did she say about me?" I asked that first night when Sam. came creeping into the little bedroom Mary had assigned me, off the kitchen.
    " 'Ah, Sammy, what a lovely girl. Lovely. Just grand.'"
    "She called me grand, that's nice," I said.
    "You're sure you want to hear this?"
    "Every word."
    "So she said, 'Well, gracious, Sammy, she isn't Catholic, what about the children?' Then she cups her hand over her mouth as if she's telling me a secret she doesn't want anyone to hear, even God, and you know God hears everything, and she says, 'The Jewish people—they're fine people, absolutely fine, but they don't believe in Our Lord.'" His imitation of Mary Galligan's accent and mannerisms had me stifling giggles lest my future mother-in-law hear them.
    "So Aiden says, 'Mom! Give it a rest.' And then I dropped the bombshell. 'I'm not sure I do either, Mom.' So she says, 'Oh, don't you be silly, now.'" He looked at me. "This isn't a subject you can discuss with my mother, you know what I mean?"
    "I'm getting the picture." How could I not, when he was doing such a terrific job of enlightening me.
    "So now she tells me, 'They don't baptize their children.' I said I thought she was getting a little serious, but she wouldn't hear that, and she said, 'What about their souls.'""
    "What about them?"
    He laughed. "Dinah, I'm no priest, but I went to mass and Sunday school forever, and it seems to me the Jews get some sort of special dispensation. Anyway, it doesn't matter to me. Really. Whatever you want to do, we'll do. Our kids can be Jewish, if you want. It'll hurt my mom, a lot, if we don't baptize the children. But it is my life, right? And, you know, even she picks and chooses, though she'd never admit it. I mean, she didn't have thirteen children, only four of us, and I know they have an active sex life, this is a very small house. You figure it out. As far as I'm concerned, Catholic and Jewish, it's the same cake with different flavor icing. Can we have Christmas, though? I'd miss that, I have to admit."
    I said Christmas would be fine and told him what my mother had said—and we