Rachel Rothstein’s Flying Leap (failed) Part I

I had always thought Tuesday a good day to die, but in the event my passing took place on a Friday, the day before Shabbas, which should have been my very last choice. Not because I observed the Sabbath, but because I wouldn’t be able to get a funeral until the day after and the shock of my going – the loss – would be lessened. I didn’t want that. Also I’d be put on hold. On the cold. Slab. Refrigeration, that preserver of vitamin-zapped, ready-peeled and partly-pulped vegetables in the sixties (though I loved it then) was not what I wanted for my body beautiful. Or even for my vegetables. Mind you, I didn’t realize then that I wouldn’t actually care by the time I was shoved into the icebox, and nor would I be craving a carrot. 

Free will schmeewill, I didn’t choose the day I went, or perhaps I just wasn’t thinking.  What a shock for Sofiya, my carer, at ten o’ clock on a sunny October morning, letting herself into my apartment – my Hadassah slash City of Beverly Hills Housing for Senior slash Needy Jews, rent $70 a month, which even I could piss on and not miss (ask me how much my son makes, go on) – and finding the body I used to call home all twisted and stiff and face down on the floor. Sofiya is armed with bagels and lox, a treat as I’m under doctor’s orders not to eat food through my mouth anymore on account of my faulty valve. Instead I have to endure a milkshake-like nutrient-enriched goop poured into a tube that goes through my belly button (yeah, through) into my stomach. Yeucht! My old doc treated me for asthma for ten years plus and gave me a lot of relief. This doc can’t even grow a beard, he’s so young, but you know what they’re like, think they know better. He’s my son’s doc, some bright spark, ach, what’cha gonna do? Whatever he says, I guess, but you can imagine, the odd treat – ice cream, matzah ball soup, and especially bagels and lox – I scarf whenever I can, even though I always pay for it afterwards with an asthma attack. But no biggie: I still have one of those machines you plug in, float your schnaz over, and inhale the steam of a pulvule of yellow liquid. That usually does the trick. I’m only supposed to do four a day at most, but I figure after I’ve eaten through my mouth I can do as many as it takes to feel OK again; besides, some days I don’t eat or use the machine at all, so that evens it out.

Anyway, here’s Sofiya, eyes wide with horror, hastily ramming the bagel bag onto the counter and starting up some kind of guttural wail, like a car engine that won’t catch, running over to my disheveled frame, distraught as all hell, putting her large red hand to my stiff white forearm, recoiling, slapping the same huge hand across her small mouth. 

‘Uch, uch, uch, uch’, she goes, over and over, ‘uch, uch, uch; my God, my God’. Sofiya is Russian. Says she was a doctor over there but can’t get the work here (she must be seventy herself). Frankly she’s not acting very doctor-like to me.

My son should have been a doctor. Didn’t I always tell him? What the hell use is another attorney. But a doctor, now that would be a good son to his mother. ‘Oh, my son saved my life!’ ‘My son, the doctor.’ ‘I’d like you to meet my son, Jerry, the doctor.’ ‘Jerome . . . .’ Ach, whatever. So he’s a lawyer, what’cha gonna do about it?

Sofiya’s on the phone now. She’s on with my daughter-in-law. The third one. Perk of the legal profession, divorce (in his case, thank God). First, the college flame (too young, the pair of them). That lasted fourteen months (I didn’t say a word). Second, the one that should have gotten him an Oscar for his performance as husband, the mother of my two snotty grandchildren; not that you’d know I had any the amount of times they visit this place. They’ve got everything and then some, then when they finally show up here they’re in tie-dye T shirts and jeans with holes as big as outer space like they haven’t got a penny. And making a row all down the hallway, so the neighbors’ doors are all opening a crack to see who the hell they belong to. Come out and see my family, the homeless. Anyway, this one, the last. She’s probably the best of the bunch. She’s practiced the occasional random act of kindness, like taking me to the doctor’s, though not without attitude. Like at the eye doctor’s, when we got back to the car after all those tests, she says ‘Rachel, the whites of your eyes are yellow!’ Here we go. ‘And I suppose yours are perfect,’ I shoot back. Victory! Until she says ‘Oh Rachel, don’t be so silly.’ Oh Rachel, don’t be so silly. 

Sofiya’s doing some serious sobbing now – I can’t tell what the hell she’s saying so she won’t be able to. She wails, stops, wails, speaks, then breaks off again describing my discombobulated bod on the floor. They’ll be lining up at the door in a minute. Rachel Rothstein’s flying leap (failed), come see it, come one, come all! I can hear Debra, that’s my daughter-in-law, calm as ever, telling Sofiya ‘slow down, slow down, Sofiya, I can’t understand what you’re saying.’ 

Debra is sitting on one of those high padded stools in her cool, light kitchen. The morning sun is filtering through the pines and the California oaks. It is lovely, I have to say, but then it should be for what my son paid for it. And they have to have grilles up everywhere, stop the breakers and the takers and reinforced glass so they can’t hear the shakers. And Neighborhood Watch; I couldn’t go for that. The only watching I like to do is when my neighbors aren't watching.

Here’s Debra’s gliding out of the driveway in her gray, no, Tungsten Jaguar, slow and solemn as a funeral cortege. She’s thinking about the last time she saw me, an occasion I remember well. It was just a couple of weeks ago, she was in Beverly Hills on the next street to mine, and I was off to the drugstore for things I need that nobody will go get for me (I told my son about the last time I struggled up the steps with two shopping bags, and my neighbor Adele yelled out: Rachel, don’t you have a son somewhere? He should be ashamed. One for me!)