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Enid sits in the center of the first row, a handkerchief folded gently in her hands. The dark
polished wood of the coffin on the bima glows in the soft light.
“Please rise.” The Rabbi makes a gesture. The congregation stands.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.
He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul.
She is familiar with this psalm, but today, the words hit her ears like English as a Second Language and her mind wanders.
“Wasn’t there a band in the sixties called Still Waters? No, Stills. It was a name. Crosby, Stills and Nash. That was it. Or was it Cosby? No, that was something else. Thank God it’s a closed casket. Definitely a plus about being Jewish.”
The woman at Piser’s funeral home had asked her to pick out clothes for him to be buried in. She stood in front of the closet for an hour. Every time she pulled something out, she could hear Ernie laughing.
“That’s what you’re going to have me wear for all of Eternity, Enid?”
Her daughter Arlene wanted to put him in sweat pants and a hoodie. She said that being dead should be a day off. Enid finally picked out a nice grey suit with a blue tie and a white collar shirt.
“Dressed for success!” Arlene snorted.
Yea, though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I will fear no evil for Thou art with me.
She loved to take walks with Ernie. In the daytime, he told her the names of birds and in the evening, he told her the names of stars. When she was with him, she feared no evil. With Ernie, she was safe.
Thy rod and thy staff shall comfort me.
“What does that even mean?” thought Enid.
Comforting for Enid was going to bed with a bowl of mac and cheese and a shitty book, Ernie beside her reading one of his murder mysteries. Thou can keep thy rod and thy staff.
You preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. You anointest my head with oil. My cup runneth over.
Enid tried to picture that dinner party. Who is going to clean all that up? Enid knew she would. In the presence of her enemies, with her little crumb sweeper, tsk-ing softly and dabbing at the wine stains from the cups that ranneth over. Ernie’s sisters called her the Prima Cleanerina. Or Arlene’s boyfriend, Nimmo, would just quietly clean it up. Enid still can’t believe the things he is capable of. Partial nerve damage in one arm. Part of the other blown away by a child holding an IED. Even as such, he is less of a fixer upper than other guys Arlene had dated. There was the one on a Day Pass still wearing a paper wrist band. The divinity student who found it exotic to go out with a ‘Jewess’. The one who wept through a family dinner over a euthanized zoo monkey he had befriended. Or something like that. It was difficult to get the whole story through the sobbing. There were the ones who were incapable of committing to even the simplest of plans. The one who was allergic to wood. Nimmo has an actual job. He is kind. He is steady. He smells like soap. Despite his disabilities, he is an unbroken man.
“You play the cards you’re dealt,“ says Nimmo. He got his MSW courtesy of the GI Bill after his tour of duty and works with other damaged vets. “Wounds worse than mine and not always visible.” He lives in the present tense like a border collie.
Of course, Nimmo is not exactly what Enid had in mind for Arlene. He is, for instance, not a Jewish orthodontist from Skokie who wears loafers without socks and monogrammed shirts. She had been planning her daughter’s wedding since the doctor said ‘It’s a girl’. Planning the chuppah and clinging all these years to her mental hope chest like Ishmael to Queequeg’s casket.
In Arlene’s twenties, Enid would probe regularly for progress with prospective suitors.
“Ma,” she said once over breakfast, as Enid again warned of the wasting of her childbearing years, “I may not ever get married. And if I do, it won’t necessarily be to a Jewish guy.”
Silence.
“It may not even be a white guy.”
Silence.
“It may not even be a guy.”
Silence.
“I might marry a pony.”
Enid looked down at her plate. “I think the omelet needs more salt,” she says.
Ernie gently pinches Arlene’s cheek. “ ’Leenie, please tell her you would at least try to make sure it’s a Jewish pony.”
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Amen
Enid’s heart feels like an emptied cupboard. She presses her hand to her chest and wonders what life will be without Ernie.
“Please be seated.” The Rabbi makes a gesture. The congregation sits.
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Freddie Levin grew up in Chicago and has been writing and drawing for as long as she can remember. She is the author/illustrator of an award winning series of curriculum based step by step guide books called 1 2 3 Draw. A million and a half copies have been sold worldwide. Her short story, “Why I Am Anti-fur” was included in the anthology, “I Thought My Father Was God”, edited by Paul Auster. Her original animated film, “In a Deep Dark Wood, There Lived an Ogre”, was accepted into the KatKatha Film Festival in New Delhi, India. She works in a sunny studio she shares with a noisy, colorful bird and a fish named Seabiscuit. She is interested in puppetry, yoga and anything with frosting.