15.

ON FRIDAY NIGHT just after sundown, Ruth led her family to the table for Shabbat dinner. She was thrilled to have her son Josh and daughter-in-law, Jan, there along with their youngest son, Jonathan, who was home from college for the weekend. Ruth's greatest regret was that her two daughters, who'd gone to universities in the northeast, had married and stayed there as had their children. That left a whole branch of her family much too far away.

She'd invited Evelyn Nadoff from two doors down as well as Bernard Templeton, one of Ira's golf buddies, whose wife was out of town. It was a mitzvah to include those who had no one with whom to share the Sabbath. Ruth wasn't an especially religious woman, but she liked to think she did what was right.

The table was set with her own grandmother's china and crystal. The silver she and Ira had received as wedding gifts, over fifty years ago, framed each place. She'd spent the day in the kitchen, something she rarely had reason to do anymore, and now the whole house smelled just as it should, of matzoh ball soup and brisket of beef warming in the oven. A faint hint of the chicken livers she'd sauteed as the base for the chopped liver appetizer they'd already consumed perfumed the air.

In the center of the table, silver candlesticks, also a wedding gift, held two stubby white Shabbat candles. A challah sat on a silver plate beside them. Ira's father's kiddush cup, which would be used to say the prayer over the wine, had been placed next to his water goblet.

Content, Ruth lit the candles, voicing the prayer that would welcome the Sabbath. She studied her husband as he made the bruchas over the wine and then pa.s.sed pieces of the challah around so that everyone at the table could join him in the blessing over the bread.

Ruth enjoyed the serving and sharing of the meal. And so, she saw, did Ira, though he would probably never think to say so. They'd shared a lifetime together, raised three wonderful, productive children, who'd produced six lovely grandchildren, two of them boys to carry on the Melnick name. It was everything she'd been raised to do and expect. But no one had warned her of what would happen when her "job" was over and no one actually needed her anymore. Or, in the case of her husband, wanted to know her.

"Fabulous meal, Ruth." Bernard groaned and patted his belly. "We'll have to get a cart tomorrow morning. I'm sure I'll still be too full to walk."

Ruth smiled at the compliment but knew Ira's regular foursome would walk no matter how full or how frail any of them became; it was a matter of honor. They'd been playing together every Sat.u.r.day morning for the last twenty-five years, and they rarely varied their routine. They teed off at nine, played eighteen holes, then stayed for lunch at the club. Ira would be home by two P.M., settled into his club chair in the den with his feet propped up on the ottoman. There he would watch golf on TV for the rest of the afternoon. With his eyes closed.

"It's true," Evelyn added. "The brisket practically melted in my mouth. Delicious!"

Ruth smiled again. Her daughter-in-law, Jan, got up and began to collect the empty dinner plates. "Wait until you taste dessert," she said. "Ruth made apple strudel and Mandelbrot with vanilla ice cream on the side."

Evelyn and Ruth joined Jan in clearing, though Ruth was careful to give the older woman only the smallest plates and serving pieces to carry. The men's conversation turned to business and Ruth listened with pride as Jonathan, who would be receiving his MBA from Vanderbilt in June, was invited to partic.i.p.ate.

When the strudel had been duly admired, Ruth cut and plated slices for everyone while Jan added a scoop of ice cream. Evelyn pa.s.sed the plate of Mandelbrot.

"It's good, Nana," Jon said between bites. "Your best strudel ever."

"You're a good boy," Ruth replied, her heart swelling with love for her children and her children's children. The grandchildren up north were also professionals, or soon would be. Two doctors, two lawyers, one accountant. Three, including Jon, were planning to come into the family bagel business. "And you're such a hard worker."

He grinned and nodded to Ira. "Well, Papa's always been a huge example."

His father feigned hurt. "So what am I, chopped liver?"

They laughed at the ancient lament.

"No," Jonathan said. "But how many people would have pa.s.sed up this latest offer from Inamatta Foods to keep working?"

Josh shook his head. His tone wasn't quite as admiring. "Not many."

"What offer?" Ruth's hands stilled. She looked at her husband as a hush fell over the table. The only person who didn't seem to notice was Evelyn, who was methodically dunking her piece of Mandelbrot into her coffee and then taking a softened bite.

"What's he talking about, Ira?"

A flush of guilt suffused her husband's cheeks. Josh dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his napkin as if to prevent himself from speaking further. Jan studied her plate while Bernard added sugar to his coffee and stirred intently. It was clear Ruth and Evelyn were the only people at the table who didn't know anything about this.

"What new offer?" Ruth asked again.

They all looked at each other. Only Jonathan didn't seem to fully comprehend the magnitude of the topic he'd raised. "Tell me, Jon. I'm dying to hear." She tried to keep the hurt and anger out of her voice. No point in frightening the child.

"Inamatta offered an obscene amount of money for the business, Nana. I mean, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, Pimp My Ride, the-whole-family-could-be-living-on-their-individual-private-islands-for-the-rest-of-their- lives obscene." He shook his head in wonder. "There aren't many people who could turn down that kind of money for something they built from nothing."

Ruth stood on shaky legs. She wanted to shriek and yell, wanted to demand to know why Ira would do such a thing. If it had been only family, she might have given in to the rage coursing through her. What a relief it would be to throw back her head, open her mouth, and howl. "I'm going to go put on a fresh pot of coffee," she said through clenched teeth.

Jan started to rise, but Ruth motioned her back down. "Thanks. Ira will help me." She looked directly at her husband as she said this. Her voice was the steely one she'd saved for the times the kids needed to be set straight. Josh actually flinched when he heard it. So did Ira.

She turned and headed to the kitchen, not even looking to see if her husband followed. When they were alone with the kitchen door closed behind them, she faced him.

"You turned down that kind of money without even mentioning it to me?" Ruth asked Ira, too upset to worry about who heard what. "After all the begging I've done to get you to slow down, you've rejected an . . . obscene . . . amount of money that could set your entire family free for life so that you can continue to be the . . . Bagel Baron?"

Like he always did when questioned, Ira stuck out his chin and prepared to dig in to defend his position. Normally Ruth worked her way in from some angle and slowly circled in on the point. In this way, she generally got what she wanted. But it was a lot of work and took way too much time. At this moment she didn't possess the patience for subterfuge; she was far too p.i.s.sed off to pretend.

"I think I deserve to know what kind of money was offered. I helped you build that business. I have shared your life for the last fifty years. You owe me that much."

She could see in his face that he didn't want to tell her. Actually saw him consider offering a lie of some sort. This was what happened when you'd lived with someone for three quarters of your life; you knew their habits and their processes like your own. Not that this had kept him from hiding something big from her.

"You might as well tell me, Ira. I seriously doubt either my son or grandson would refuse to fill me in." She shook her head as if to dislodge some of the disappointment she felt. "Even Jan and Bernie know. I guess I'm the chopped liver in this family."

"It wasn't all that much, Ruth. The boy's exaggerating."

"Tell me."

"Sixty-five million." He had the nerve to puff out his chest in pride.

"You turned down sixty-five million dollars." It was a statement, not a question. She stared into his eyes as she processed this.

"Have you taken leave of your senses?" She didn't wait for an answer. "You're almost eighty years old. And yet you intend to spend whatever time we have left running a bagel company? You'd rather do that sixty-seventy hours a week than spend time with the people who love you? I never thought I'd say this, Ira, but you're a fool!"

The shock on his face was nothing compared to the shock she felt. They hadn't always agreed about things; often over the last half century she'd questioned him. They'd had their share of arguments. Most of the time they'd found a way to compromise at least enough to live to argue another day. But deep down she'd never doubted his intentions. She'd always believed he'd do what was right not just for himself but for her and the kids.

But he was like a dinosaur caught in a tar pit of his own making, stuck in the sameness of his life, afraid to evolve, to adapt, to let go of the old and try to embrace something new. "I am not going to spend what's left of my life watching you work yourself like a slave for whatever is left of yours. I want to travel. With you, Ira. Take a cla.s.s, learn something new. With you. I want to be with you. Not waving good-bye in the morning and then spending the rest of the day trying to fill my time until you come home, eat dinner, and fall asleep in front of the television. Your rut is my rut, and I don't want to spend the rest of my life in it."

"Ruth, I just . . ."

"No," she interrupted. "I can't think of a single legitimate excuse for hanging on to that company. You know what? I take back the word *fool.' That was the wrong thing to say."

Ira's shoulders relaxed slightly. His chin slipped down a notch. It was clear that he thought she was going to apologize and sweep this whole mess under the rug. He was wrong.

"You're not a fool," she said more calmly. "You're a coward. And I'm not prepared to spend the rest of my days with someone who's afraid."

She left him in the kitchen. And when she walked back into the dining room, no one asked about the coffee she'd supposedly left to make. When Ira came back with a fresh pot, Ruth ignored him. She and Evelyn and Jan cleaned up afterward and mostly Ruth just listened to their chatter. She kissed everyone good-bye when it was time and then she simply went into the master bath, where she creamed and washed her face as she'd done every night of her married life. Then she put on her nightgown, robe, and slippers; took her satin-covered pillow from the bed; and carried it to the guest bedroom. Under more normal circ.u.mstances, Ruth might have evicted Ira from their marital bed. But this was not a punishment or even a statement. She simply couldn't sleep next to a man who thought so little of her. She could barely bring herself to stay in the same house.

"ARE YOU SURE you don't want to come to the studio with me?" Melanie asked Vivien as she rooted through the acc.u.mulation of stuff on the kitchen counter in search of her keys. "You might enjoy the Friday-night lesson and practice party. It's very social. On a good night we might have sixty-seventy people." She raised her eyes heavenward, apparently offering a little prayer that this would be the case tonight. "Clay's coming and he's a really good dancer. I'm sure he'd be glad to take you under his wing." She offered this as if it might be some sort of inducement. Was there any part of Melanie's life that he had not insinuated himself into?

"Sorry," Vivien said. "Belly dancing's kind of growing on me, but I think one dance cla.s.s a week is my limit."

"You do fine when you concentrate, Vivi," Melanie pointed out. She was opening drawers now, still in search of the elusive keys.

"Well, it's hard to do too much damage when you don't have a partner. I think we should leave well enough alone."

"But what'll you do after you drop the kids at the game?" Melanie asked, striking pay dirt in the vegetable bin of the refrigerator. She pulled the key ring out from between two bags of chopped lettuce and waved them triumphantly. "I hate to think of you sitting at home alone with nothing to do."

Vivien would actually have enjoyed some time alone; the last two weeks with Melanie and the kids and the cast of characters at the dance studio was a lot more "togetherness" than Vivien was used to. "Don't worry about me, Mel. I could get a bite out or veg in front of the TV. It's not as if I'm out every night in New York."

In truth, Vivi had already decided to stay at the Pemberton High football game, where she expected to mine for gold. Or at least material for this week's column.

"All right." Melanie shouted good-bye to the kids and hurried out to the van.

"Come on, guys," Vivien shouted upstairs to Shelby and Trip. "Let's go!"

Vivien backed the Toyota down the driveway just a few minutes after Melanie, though with none of her finesse. "Maybe I should have let it warm up a little bit longer," Vivien said.

Shelby rolled her eyes. "I don't think it's a mechanical problem." Trip made no comment, but as Vivien drove through the neighborhood she could feel both of them judging her and finding her wanting. At the exit onto 120, she waited until there were no cars whizzing by in either direction rather than pulling out between medians; that move hadn't gone so well the other morning.

"Oh, my G.o.d," Shelby groaned. "We'll be lucky to get there before the game is over!"

"Better safe than sorry," Vivien said like some old fart.

Shelby laughed at her. Even Trip grinned.

"Hey," Vivi said to Shelby. "If you behaved responsibly once in a while, you could be driving yourself to the game right now."

Shelby stopped laughing.

"In fact, if you can't do the right thing for yourself, maybe you could take your mother into account. It'd give her one less thing to worry about." Vivien hardly recognized her voice with its lecturing tone.

"You're kidding, right?" Shelby snapped. "Since when did you become the queen of considerate behavior?"

The girl had a point. But then Vivien had never spent two weeks watching her sister run herself ragged trying to take care of a home, a business, and two children before. She'd had no idea at all what Melanie dealt with on a daily basis. And if she had?

"I don't even know what you're doing here," Shelby said. "None of us knows. Why don't you just go back to New York and mind your own effing business?"

Vivien's mouth tightened. No matter how Shelby dressed or liked to think of herself, she was only seventeen. Trying to ignore the insult itself, she focused on Shelby's use of the F-word.

"Vulgarity is a mark of a limited vocabulary." This had been Caroline's response to anything even approximating a curse. Vivien hadn't heard the reprimand in almost twenty years, and yet it tripped off of her tongue without conscious thought and in the same insulting upper-cla.s.s drawl with which her mother had always delivered it.

The remark got Shelby's attention all right, but not because she took the reprimand to heart. "Oh, my G.o.d. You didn't really just say that did you?" She chortled. "What century did that come from? No, I know, I bet it came from Grandmother Caroline's bible-Gone with the Wind!"

Vivien had thought the remark asinine when it had been used on her and she was appalled that it had come out of her mouth. Would all of those things she'd rejected as a child become part of her repertoire after she gave birth? Were they even now fighting their way out of her subconscious for use later? Was she, in fact, doomed to be her mother? Once during an argument Caroline had hissed, "I hope you end up with a child just like you!" What if that actually happened? Oh, G.o.d, what in the world was she doing?

Lost in her own frightening visions of parenthood, Vivien didn't respond to Shelby's taunt. In the wrong lane when it was time to turn, she reacted without thinking and cut off another driver, who laid on the horn. After that they inched along behind a long stream of cars heading toward the high school.

"Parking's to the left. You can just drop us off at the corner and leave if you go straight." Shelby pointed toward the drop-off spot. "You can pick us up at ten thirty. Or we'll call if we want to come home early."

"I'm not the help," Vivien said, making the left instead. "And I'm planning to stay for the game."

There was a shocked silence.

"Show me where to park," she said.

Trip sat up straighter in the backseat, tuned in now. Shelby's gaze narrowed. "Trip might be willing to be seen with you. I'm not."

"Um, grown-ups and kids don't, um, hang together at games." Trip shifted uncomfortably behind her. "There's like separate sections and everything." It was a long speech for Trip; apparently even the strong, silent types wanted to evade embarra.s.sment.

"That s.p.a.ce is mine!" Vivien said as she zoomed into a vacant parking spot and received more horn from the SUV driver that had been eyeing it. But Vivien didn't care. She was thinking how odd it was that she'd reached an age where her mere presence could be an embarra.s.sment to her niece and nephew. "Well, you all go on ahead then so n.o.body suspects we arrived together," Vivien said. "I'll just get my cane out of the back and hobble in on my own."

They were out of the car and distancing themselves so fast she was talking to herself, like any senior citizen might.

Vivi paid at the gate and then walked across the track to the Pemberton side. The stands were filling rapidly and even from a distance the separation of teen from adult was apparent; at the far end the marching band filled an entire section; the strains of the school's fight song filled the air and wafted across the field where the Pemberton team warmed up. A steady stream of students paraded from one end of the stands to the other, busy seeing and being seen. An even greater number milled about in amoebalike groups that continually expanded and contracted.

She slowed in front of the concession stand, a cinder-block rectangle, which was knee-deep in teens waiting to buy food from parents working feverishly to serve them.

Vivi scanned the bleachers for a good observation point. Out of the corner of one eye she caught a glimpse of Melanie's neighbor, Catherine Dennison, who waved eagerly and motioned her up.

"You look like you've gone native," the blonde said, taking in Vivien's sweats and sneakers. Vivi had noticed plenty of other parents dressed this way, but Catherine, who wore tight designer jeans and a cropped sweater, wasn't one of them. "What brings you to the game?" She slid over to make room for Vivien on the hard metal bleacher.

"I brought Shelby and Trip and thought I might as well stay and watch," Vivi said. "I feel obligated to embarra.s.s my niece and nephew as much as humanly possible while I'm in town. Not that they're going to get close enough to me to allow that to happen."

Catherine smiled, showing perfectly capped teeth. "Usually the only time you see them is if they run out of money."

"Is your daughter here?" Vivi couldn't remember the girl's name, only that she was a junior like Shelby.

"Of course." Catherine pointed down to the field where a long-legged blonde stood at the very top of a six-person pyramid. "Claire cheers very compet.i.tively. She's cocaptain of the squad and she's been on the Homecoming Court every year since she started at Pemberton. She's also a member of the National Honor Society and has a GPA of four-point-five."

Claire Dennison did a summersault and a half off the pyramid and made a perfect landing with her arms up in a V. Her mother's artificially endowed chest puffed out in pride.

"Wow," Vivien said, beginning to understand Melanie's reluctance to converse and compare. Still, she'd come looking for someone who would dish, and Catherine might be just self-absorbed enough not to notice that Vivi was more interested in the people who were watching the game than the people who were playing.

A trumpet sounded a cavalry charge and the game began. Below, the migration of students from one end of the bleachers to the other continued. She saw Trip in the middle of a group of guys, looking oddly alone. Vivien peered more closely, not sure why she'd thought that. Maybe it was how still he was in the midst of everyone else's constant fidgeting and movement. Or the slightly removed look on his face.

Down by the fence Shelby strutted up to a tall broad-shouldered boy lounging carelessly against a fencepost. Like most of the girls, Shelby wore tight jeans slung low on her hips. Despite the mid-November chill, the layered T-shirts she wore were extremely thin and bared the flat of her stomach when she moved, and she moved a lot, not-so-subtle gyrations meant to get and hold the boy's attention.

Catherine had apparently been watching, too. "That's Ty Womack," she said. "All the girls think he's totally hot." She watched the interplay between Shelby and the boy. "But he's got a reputation for being wild. He was suspended from the football team for drinking and for *unbecoming behavior,' though that could mean almost anything."

The boy, who had the height and broad shoulders of a man, leaned down to whisper something in Shelby's ear. Shelby said something back, and they both laughed.

"My Claire knows to stay away from boys like that. I'm surprised Melanie allows it."

Shelby tossed her dark hair and laid a hand on the boy's arm. Despite the noise and the constant stream of students ebbing and flowing around them, Shelby and the boy were completely focused on each other. A moment later he slipped an arm around her shoulders and they walked off around the back of the bleachers.

Vivien didn't know whether Melanie was even aware of Ty Womack's existence. Nor did she know what, if anything, she could do to protect Shelby from him. If she charged down there and broke up what might be an innocent kiss or conversation, Shelby would never speak to her again and any chance of establishing a relationship would be gone. But it felt wrong not to act.

"I hate to say it," Catherine said. "But ever since J.J. died, Shelby's seemed a bit . . . wild herself."

Vivien's hands knotted into fists. With some surprise, she realized she wanted to tell Catherine to mind her own business. But she'd come seeking information; she knew from experience that you couldn't always control what kind you got.