Rachel Rothstein’s Flying Leap (failed) Part II

. Look at Debra, she’s still for a moment; she’s heard me. She’s standing, just standing in my shaded bedroom, eyes closed now. It’s me, Debra. She’s replacing the blouse on the hanger and putting it back in the closet. Pulling out the ivory colored one with the soft, high tie neck, yeah, that’ll do it. Elegant, but comfortable, I like that! Yes to the tan pants, and those blue shoes – comfy (you never know) but still stylish – and the blue cardigan (clean). 

So here they all are. My clan. Gathered. Another hot October day. Mount Sinai. Here’s the Rabbi, a youngster I’ve never met. Ach, what the hell’s he know about me? She’s schooled him well, though, Debra, ‘cause he’s talking like he does know me. There’s the last wife, with her sister, there’s my brother Abe and my niece and her husband, when the hell’d I last see them? Boy, they’re really crawling out the woodwork. Here they are all trailing behind the coffin-on-wheels, no meals needed, over the green in the hot sun to my resting place. They assemble under cover of a little canvas roof on poles (what, to remind us of the diaspora?) with tiny folding seats next to my gawping yawn of a grave, my portly son sweating and faint. The warm Santa Ana winds do nothing to mop the sweat off these brows, and there are tears, I am almost moved by the display, especially Sofiya, sobbing and wobbling all over Debra, tears and sweat and flesh. Debra, however, sits motionless. Debra’s stunned. Her dark brown cotton dress is unblemished by bodily secretions. Spadefuls of earth hit my coffin (thank you), dropped gently by my nearest and dearest and landing loudly, but Debra refrains. She is frozen to her seat, this hot day, like a pre-packed vegetable, zapped. It happened back in the foyer, when she offered to take the burden off my son and come make sure it was me they were sending off into eternal repose, before they screwed me in forever. 

The polished mahogany coffin was open. Debra was silently shown into the thickly carpeted room. She approached me nervously, I could tell, then she saw the familiar clothes, familiar shape, and emboldened, came up close. And gasped out loud and drew her hand to her lips.  It wasn’t the coiffed hairdo those guys had given me that fazed her (she’d expected me to look a little different), and it wasn’t a botched makeup job - the makeup was as she’d requested: ‘not too much, just powder and a little lipstick’ (they were reverent, kindly, patient, wrote it all down). No, it wasn’t anything like that. What shocked Debra, when she got close enough to see my face, was the triumphant grin on my waxen mouth, as though I knew something she didn’t.


Read Part I