Possibility of Everything (eBook)

Topanga Canyon, California
September 2000

The soft clinks of a metal spoon against stainless steel filter upstairs from the kitchen as Carmen prepares Maya's dinner. Tonight it's pasta with red sauce and a side dish of peas. Carmen hums as she cooks, low thrumming vibrations occasionally broken by a string of high- pitched la- la- la- las. I glance at the digital clock at the bottom of my computer screen. Five twenty-six P.M. In four minutes, I'll go down to sit with Maya for dinner, and relieve Carmen for the evening. Then I'll give Maya her bath and read her The Red Balloon, for the fourth time this week. I'll put her to sleep, watch some TV, get into bed with a book, and wait for Uzi to come home.

The ceiling fan churns above my head in determined, repetitive circles. I pinch the fabric of my white cotton tank top away from my chest and angle an exhale between my breasts, trying to dry the thin film of sweat that's settled there. It's late September in southern California, our hottest month of the year, and heat rises precipitously in a house with a wall of windows downstairs.

I move my fingers across the keyboard faster, as if the speed of my fingers might stir up a breeze. Today I'm working on a dual review for the Chicago Tribune, two Jewish- themed books that have little in common beyond the religious angle. Whoever paired them probably didn't realize that, and it's my job to figure out how to make them work together in the same review. The first book is a history of New York's Lower East Side, packed with detail and research. The second is a memoir by an American psychotherapist, a single mother who moved to Jerusalem with her school- age daughter to jump- start a new phase of her life. I felt predisposed to like this one, as the American wife of an Israeli- born husband, but each time the mother wrote about putting her rapturous love for her adopted country ahead of her daughter's well- being, I had to force myself to keep reading. As a reviewer I'm supposed to be objective and keep my focus on the text, but I've had to work hard at that with this one. As a mother I found too many times in the book when I wanted to grab the author by the shoulders and shout, 'Snap out of it! And put your daughter on a plane back to the United States!' I'm trying to figure out if my reaction reveals a weakness in the book or if it's just a reflection of my parenting and the different choices I imagine I'd make. I know how much sweat and lost sleep goes into every book that's written, and I'm loath to review one harshly until I'm certain my criticism is valid.

Downstairs, Carmen sets Maya's sectional plate and sippy cup on the dining table, the sound of plastic kissing wood. Then there's the scuff of a wooden chair being dragged back across the red tile floor.

'La Ma- ya!' Carmen sings out. 'It is time for dinner now, please!' I'm still not used to this, having someone else take charge in our kitchen. For the first few weeks after Carmen came to work for us four days a week, we kept circling each other awkwardly at the refrigerator at breakfast, bumping elbows in front of the sink at dinnertime, unsure of who should be doing what and when. Before I moved in with Uzi I'd lived alone for ten years, and I'd developed a highly particular way of getting things done. This is not to say I'm tidy or organized by nature-- sadly, I am not-- but I've always maintained a semblance of order in the kitchen. It's the singular achievement that gives me a sense of domestic competence, as if being able to find the cutting board in the same place every time I need it offers proof that no matter what kind of sorry state the living room might be in at that moment, I...