End of the Jews by Adam Mansbach

Author:Adam Mansbach [Mansbach, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780385525688
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

SIX

Amalia leans over her daughter’s crib, slides her arms beneath the sleeping child, and starts to lift her, then changes her mind. Better to let Linda nap until the sounds of typing across the hall abate and the trip is officially under way. She’s bound to wake up the moment they start the car, and at this time of day that means uninterrupted caterwauling for the whole three-hour trip from New Haven to Cambridge—especially since Amalia can’t breast-feed her and drive at the same time, and Tristan, after six years in Connecticut and eight months as a father, can’t yet handle a car or comfort a baby.

The calming regularity of a noontime nap is the only tenet of her mother’s child-rearing philosophy to which Amalia has adhered. Linda will be raised by her parents, not a procession of nannies hired because their native tongues correspond to the latest culinary trends. Maternal caprice and passing fancy will not determine the course of her education. Unlike Amalia, she will never awaken and find her entire schedule remade: tennis swapped for horseback riding, German supplanted by French, piano lessons replaced by a pair of long-eared rabbits intended to teach her responsibility.

Tristan’s study door clicks open, and Amalia straightens and turns, one shushing finger to her lips to remind him of the obvious. He nods, crosses the hall in four long strides, peers down his nose into the crib with the air of a patrolling watchman confirming that all’s well. A moment passes, and Tristan extends a hand—haltingly, as if his daughter is an unknown dog equally likely to sniff and wag or growl and lunge. He strokes the baby’s cheek with a finger.

“Kiss her,” Amalia whispers, smiling.

Tristan replies with a look that yanks her back ten years, to 1943 and their first months of marriage, when they were still sharing his two-room New York apartment and Tristan was hoarding royalty checks until he felt he had enough money to match her contribution to the purchase of a house, this house: one big enough for both of them to write in. His desk was in the bedroom then, and this is the look Tristan used to turn and give her when she told him, Honey, come to bed. It is simultaneously apologetic and indignant—a forlorn plea for her to understand that he cannot comply although he knows he should, cut with resentment toward her for asking and toward himself for being who he is. It is a mute, searching, almost canine look, lengthy enough for Amalia to realize anew that challenges only strengthen her husband’s rigidity. It was built on them. He knows it, and he’s asking her not to make things worse.

The look dissolves, so fast Amalia wonders if she imagined it this time. Tristan bends forward and kisses his daughter just below the ear. Sometimes he came to bed, too. Even when he didn’t, it upset him more than it did Amalia; she’d wind up reassuring him that it was all right, that she understood.

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