The Storyteller Read online

  My parents were Jews, but they didn't keep kosher or go to services (except for the years prior to Pepper's and Saffron's bat mitzvahs, when it was mandatory. I used to sit at Friday night services listening to the cantor sing in Hebrew and wonder why Jewish music was full of minor chords. For Chosen People, the songwriters sure didn't seem very happy). My parents did, however, fast on Yom Kippur and refused to have a Christmas tree.

  To me, it seemed they were following an abridged version of Judaism, so who were they to tell me how and what to believe? I said this to my parents when I was lobbying to not have a bat mitzvah. My father got very quiet. The reason it's important to believe in something, he said, is because you can. Then he sent me to my room without supper, which was truly shocking because in our household, we were encouraged to state our opinions, no matter how controversial. It was my mother who sneaked upstairs with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for me. "Your father may not be a rabbi," she said, "but he believes in tradition. That's what parents pass down to their children."

  "Okay," I argued. "I promise to do my back-to-school shopping in July; and I'll always make sweet-potato-marshmallow casserole for Thanksgiving. I don't have a problem with tradition, Mom. I have a problem going to Hebrew school. Religion isn't in your DNA. You don't believe just because your parents believe."

  "Grandma Minka wears sweaters," my mother said. "All the time."

  This was a seemingly random observation. My father's mother lived in an assisted living community. She had been born in Poland and still had an accent that made it sound like she was always singing. And yes, Grandma Minka wore sweaters, even when it was ninety degrees out, but she also wore too much blush and leopard prints.

  "A lot of survivors had their tattoos surgically removed, but she said seeing it every morning reminds her that she won."

  It took me a moment to realize what my mother was telling me. My father's mother had been in a concentration camp? How had I made it to age twelve without knowing this? Why would my parents have hidden this information from me?

  "She doesn't like to talk about it," my mother said simply. "And she doesn't like her arm to show in public."

  We had studied the Holocaust in social studies class. It was hard to imagine the textbook pictures of living skeletons matching the plump woman who always smelled like lilacs, who never missed her weekly hair appointment, who kept brightly colored canes in every room of her condo so that she always had easy access to one. She was not part of history. She was just my grandma.

  "She doesn't go to temple," my mother said. "I guess after all that, you'd have a pretty complicated relationship with God. But your father, he started going. I think it was his way of processing what happened to her."

  Here I was, trying desperately to shed my religion so I could blend in, and it turned out being Jewish was truly in my blood, that I was the descendant of a Holocaust survivor. Frustrated, angry, and selfish, I threw myself backward against my pillows. "That's Dad's issue. It has nothing to do with me."

  My mother hesitated. "If she hadn't lived, Sage, neither would you."

  That was the one and only time we ever discussed Grandma Minka's past, although when we brought her to our house for Chanukah that year, I found myself scrutinizing her to see some shadow of the truth on her face. But she was the same as always, picking the skin off the roasted chicken to eat when my mother wasn't looking, emptying her purse of perfume and makeup samples she'd collected for my sisters, discussing the characters on All My Children as if they were friends she visited for coffee. If she had been in a concentration camp during World War II, she must have been a completely different person at the time.

  The night my mother told me about my grandmother's history, I dreamed of a moment I hadn't remembered, from when I was very tiny. I was sitting on Grandma Minka's lap while she turned the pages of a book and read me the story. I realize now that it wasn't the right story at all. The picture book was of Cinderella, but she must have been thinking of something else, because her tale was about a dark forest and monsters, a trail of oats and grain.

  I also recall that I wasn't paying much attention, because I was mesmerized by the gold bangle bracelet on my grandmother's wrist. I kept reaching for it, pulling at her sweater. At one point, the wool rode up just far enough for me to be distracted by the faded blue numbers on her inner forearm. What's that?

  My telephone number.

  I had memorized my telephone number the previous year in preschool, so that if I got lost, the police could call home.

  What if you move? I asked.

  Oh, Sage, she laughed. I'm here to stay.

  *

  The next day, Mary comes into the kitchen while I'm baking. "I had a dream last night," she says. "You were making baguettes with Adam. You told him to put the loaves in the oven, but instead, he stuck your arm inside. I screamed and tried to pull you out of the fire but I wasn't fast enough. When you stepped away, you didn't have a right hand. Just an arm made out of bread dough. It's fine, Adam said, and he took a knife and hacked your wrist. He sliced off your thumb and your pinkie and each finger, and each one was soaked with blood."

  "Well," I say. "Good afternoon to you, too." Then I open the refrigerator and take out a tray of buns.

  "That's it? You don't even want to speculate on what it meant?"

  "That you had coffee before you went to bed," I suggest. "Remember when you dreamed that Rocco refused to take off his shoes because he had chicken feet?" I face her. "Have you even ever met Adam? Do you know what he looks like?"

  "Even the most beautiful things can be toxic. Monkshood, lily of the valley--they're both in the Monet garden you like so much at the top of the Holy Stairs, but I wouldn't go near them if I weren't wearing gloves."

  "Isn't that a liability for the shrine?"

  She shakes her head. "Most of the visitors refrain from eating the scenery. But that's not the point, Sage. The point is that this dream was a sign."

  "Here we go," I mutter.

  "Thou shalt not commit adultery," Mary preaches. "You can't get any more clear than that directive. And if you do, bad things happen. You get stoned by your neighbors. You become an outcast."

  "Your hands become edible," I say. "Look, Mary, don't go full-frontal nun on me. What I do with my free time is my own business. And you know I don't believe in God."

  She moves, blocking my path. "That doesn't mean He doesn't believe in you," she says.

  My scar tingles. My left eye starts to tear, the way it did for months after the surgery. Back then it was as if I were sobbing for everything I would be losing in the future, even though I didn't know it at the time. Maybe it is archaic and--ironically--biblical to believe that ugly is as ugly does, that a scar or a birthmark is the outward sign of an inner deficiency, but in my case, it also happens to be true. I did something awful; every time I catch a glance of my reflection I am reminded of it. Is it wrong for most women to sleep with a married man? Of course, but I am not most women. Maybe that's why, even though the old me would never have fallen for Adam, the new me did just that. It's not that I feel entitled, or that I deserve to be with someone else's husband. It's that I don't believe I deserve anything better.

  I'm not a sociopath. I'm not proud of my relationship. But most of the time, I can make excuses for it. The fact that Mary has gotten under my skin today means that I am tired, or more vulnerable than I thought, or both.

  "What about that poor woman, Sage?"

  That poor woman is Adam's wife. That poor woman has a man I love, and two wonderful kids, and a face that is smooth and scar-free. That poor woman has had everything she wants handed to her on a silver platter.

  I reach for a sharp knife and begin slicing the tops of the hot cross buns. "If you want to feel sorry for yourself," Mary continues, "then do it in a way that isn't going to destroy other people's lives."

  I point the tip of the knife at my scar. "Do you think I wanted this?" I ask. "Do you think I don't wish every day of my life th