MONDAY
1
The soft growl on the train is coming from me.
I flush with shame at the insistent rumbling of my stomach. Thankfully, the Monday-morning brown line is too crowded with bundled-up commuters for anyone but me to notice the sound. If someone does somehow clock it, they’ll probably assume it’s coming from the pigtailed pregnant woman I gave my seat to at the last stop.
The train lurches, and I nearly drop my peppermint mocha. Technically, you’re not supposed to have open food or beverages aboard, but no one follows that rule. You’ll only get in trouble if you spill on someone. Nobody really cares what’s going on in the background until the mess impacts them.
When my stomach rumbles yet again, the pigtailed pregnant woman gives me a conspiratorial look. Everyone else on the train might think it’s her, but she knows it’s me. She isn’t judging, though; her expression is friendly. Surprisingly kind and intimate in a maternal sort of way. I take in her pert nose, amused hazel eyes, and the beautiful coppery shade of her two neat, thick braids. I want to tell her I bet you’re gonna be a great mother—but who needs to hear that from a stranger? Besides, maybe she already is a mother. This might not be her first rodeo.
Another grumble from my midsection cues me to return my attention to myself. I smile weakly, averting my gaze as I take a slow sip of my mocha, attempting to temporarily silence my stomach’s demands. While I’ve always had a healthy appetite, lately it’s like I’m haunted by this constant craving. I can take the edge off sometimes, but I’m never really satisfied.
My granddaughter Eve, oy, let me tell you, she can really eat, my grandmother used to say with pride. But it wasn’t a problem when I was a kid. I was just a girl who liked food. Now, it’s like I can never get enough. I’ve been trying to tell myself it’s seasonal. The weather. Winter cold snap making everyone want to hibernate and fatten up like all those rotund city squirrels. But I think it’s something more than that.
Like, say, losing my father a year ago.
Or my looming fortieth birthday.
Or my little sister’s upcoming wedding.
Or the growing conviction that I’m going to die alone.
Or, most likely, all of the above.
Rather than sift through all the wreckage, it’s easiest to just blame my hungry malaise on December—and specifically, Christmas.
Holidays make excellent emotional scapegoats, and I’ve always had a powerful love/hate relationship with Christmas. I’m pretty sure that’s just part of growing up as a religious minority in America. The holiday to end all holidays is an omnipresent blur of red and green, a nonstop monthlong takeover of society as we know it, which magically manages to be both inescapable and exclusionary. It’s relentless. Exhausting.
But at the same time, dammit, the persistent cheer is intoxicating, and I want in on it.
That’s why I do things like set my vintage radio alarm to the twenty-four-hour-carols station that pops up every November for the “countdown to Christmas.” It’s an annual ritual I never miss, but also never mention to any of my friends—the literal definition of guilty pleasure, which might just be the most Jewish kind of enjoyment ever.
From Thanksgiving all the way until the New Year, I start every day with the sounds of crooning baritones, promises of holiday homecomings, and all those bells—silver, jingling, carol-of-the. I can’t help it. My whole life, I’ve loved all the glitzy aspects of the season. The sparkling lights adorning trees and outlining the houses and apartment buildings throughout Chicagoland always seemed so magical to the little Jewish girl with the only dark house on the block. And as an adult, God help me, I cannot get enough of seasonal mochas. (At the same time, I feel a need to assert my Hanukkah-celebrant status, resenting the default assumption that everyone celebrates Christmas. Because humans are complicated.)
One of the best and worst things about the holiday season is how much more you wind up chatting with other people. Wishing total strangers happy holidays, commenting on their overflowing shopping bags, chitchatting with people in line for the aforementioned addictive
peppermint mochas. I’m not in the mood for it this year as much as in years past, but once in a while I’m glad to take advantage of the holiday-related conversational opportunities.
For instance, there’s a new guy in my apartment building. He moved in a few months ago. He has a British accent, thick dark brows, muscular arms, and a charming tendency to hold the door for everyone. I haven’t crushed this hard on someone since high school. We said hello a few times over the fall, but December has opened the door to much more lobby banter.
Hot Josh—which is what I call him when he’s not around, and am absolutely doomed to someday accidentally call him in person—has been getting a lot of boxes delivered to our lobby. Which, for better or worse, has given me multiple excuses to make stupid jokes. Most recently, a huge overseas package arrived; it had clearly cost a fortune to ship. Hot Josh made some comment about the overzealous shipper of said holiday package, rolling his eyes at the amount of postage plastered all over the box.
It’s better than if they forgot to put on any stamps at all, I said. Have you heard the joke about the letter someone tried to send without a stamp?
Uh, no? Hot Josh replied, raising an eyebrow.
You wouldn’t get it, I said, and snort-laughed.
He just blinked. Apparently, for some of us, all those cheery holiday conversational opportunities are more like sparkling seasonal landmines.
At the next train stop, only a few passengers exit, while dozens more shove their way in. The handful of departing passengers include the pigtailed pregnant woman. She rises awkwardly from her seat, giving me a hey-thanks-again farewell nod as she indicates I should sit there again.
I look around cautiously as I reclaim my seat, making sure no new pregnant, elderly, or otherwise-in-need folks are boarding. It’s only after I finish this courtesy check that I notice I’m now sitting directly across from a man in full Santa Claus gear.
He’s truly sporting the whole shebang: red crushed-velvet suit with wide black belt and matching buckle, epic white beard, and thigh-high black boots. His bowl-full-of-jelly belly is straining the buttons on the jacket, and I honestly can’t tell if it’s a pillow or a legit beer gut.
I’m not sure how to react. If Dad was here, he wouldn’t hesitate. He’d high-five Santa, and they’d instantly be best friends. But I never know where to start, what to say. Like, should I smile at the guy? Refer to him as “Santa”? Maybe, like, salute him, or something?
I gotta at least take a picture and text it to Dad. He’d get such a kick out of this guy—
My hand automatically goes for my phone, pulling it swiftly from my pocket. But my amusement is cut off with a violent jerk when I touch the screen and nothing happens. That’s when I remember that my phone is off—and why I keep it off.
My rumbling stomach curdles. Even after a whole year, the habit of reaching for
my phone to share something with my father hasn’t gone away. I’m not sure it ever will.
Shoving my phone back into my coat pocket, I ignore St. Nick and just stare out the filthy train windows instead. Even through this grayish pane streaked with God-knows-what horrific substances, the city is beautiful. I love the views from the train, even the inglorious graffiti and glimpses of small backyards. And now, every neighborhood in Chicago has its holiday decorations up. This Midwestern metropolis, with its glittering architecture, elegant lakefront, and collection of distinct neighborhoods sprawling away from the water, knows how to show off. Most people think downtown is prettiest. But if you ask me, it’s hard to beat my very own neighborhood, Lincoln Square.
In the center of the Square is Giddings Plaza. In summertime the plaza’s large stone fountain is the bubbling backdrop to all the concerts and street festivals in the brick-paved square. But in wintertime, the water feature is drained and becomes the planter for a massive Christmas tree. Surrounded by all the perky local shops, the plaza is cute as hell year-round. When you add tinsel and twinkle lights and a giant fir tree that looks straight out of a black-and-white Christmas movie, it’s almost unbearably charming.
We haven’t had a proper snowfall yet, so the natural seasonal scenery has been lacking a little. But even with the bare tree limbs and gray skies, the stubbornly sparkling holiday decor provides a whispered promise of magic ahead.
I really want to believe in that magic.
The light shifts as we rattle beneath looming buildings and trees, and I briefly catch my reflection in the dirty window. Dark curls crushed beneath my olive green knit cap, round cheeks, dark eyes, no makeup except a smear of lip gloss I bought because it was called Holiday Cheer. The details are all familiar, but I barely recognize myself. I wonder if I’ll ever feel like the real-me again, or if grief has made me into someone else entirely.
Last month marked the one-year anniversary of losing my dad. A whole year, and it still doesn’t feel real. Most days, it seems like I’m in the wrong version of my life. Or like everything around me is just some strange movie set I wandered onto and can’t seem to escape. I keep waiting for things to feel normal again. For me to feel normal again.
Hasn’t happened yet.
But somehow, a year passed—the days dragging, the months flying—and it was time to return to the cemetery. “Unveiling” is one of a thousand strange and powerful old Jewish traditions. For the first eleven months after someone dies, their headstone is covered. It allows the family to ease in to their new reality, as if easing in is possible. When the first yahrzeit—anniversary of death—approaches, there’s a formal unveiling of the headstone. The next step in the painful, protracted process of accepting that your loved one is really gone.
It was a simple event, held graveside at Beth Shalom cemetery. A quiet corner, shaded beneath a tree, not too near any other headstones. When we buried my father last year, we also purchased the adjacent plot for my mother.
There’s a discount if we get them both now, said my mother. Your father would approve
Nobody laughed or cried when she said it. We just nodded.
None of us have shown true emotion since Dad was ripped from our lives. The shock of the loss rendered us wooden. We move through the world like marionettes, walking and talking, but no longer real girls. In the days leading up to the unveiling, I had been readying myself for a long-delayed emotional outburst. Hoping someone would finally crack. The first dam would break and set off a chain reaction. Those of us who knew Dad best would finally let our sorrow burst forth like Niagara Falls.
I could almost see it, a holy moment of release: my mother would wail, then my younger sister, Rosie, would join in, and that would give me permission to howl as well. The Goodman women would all let out the mournful keening yearning to break free.
But nope.
Instead, as I stood graveside between my mother and my little sister, all three of us remained dry-eyed. Ana, my sister’s fiancée, was the only one periodically sniffling. The Goodman women simply said the prayers, acknowledged the moment, and that was it. One more mourning to-do item checked off the list, and the marionettes lurched off again.
The unveiling service for my father was almost identical to the one for my grandmother—except at Bubbe’s unveiling, Dad was there, with silent tears sliding down his face. Squeezing my hand. Putting his arm around my mother. Kissing the top of my sister’s head. Showing his emotions and granting the rest of us permission to mourn. With him at our side, we all cried at the graveside when her headstone was revealed, then laughed over lunch at the nearby diner while we shared our favorite Bubbe stories. My father was the one who knew how to be fully human in a way the rest of us just don’t. We tried to make that clear on his headstone.
DAVID MOSHE GOODMAN
APRIL 10, 1950–NOVEMBER 25, 2023
BELOVED FATHER, HUSBAND, BROTHER, FRIEND.
HE NEVER MET A STRANGER
(OR A SANDWICH)
HE DIDN’T LOVE.
HIS MEMORY WILL ALWAYS BE A BLESSING.
It was strange to gaze at those simple letters. Even with their attempts at heart and humor, the words on his headstone were insufficient. Seeing the graven memorial didn’t open me up. It just added another dead bolt to the door I’d firmly shut on my emotions.
Not good enough, I thought, and turned from the stone.
We were also supposed to light a yahrzeit candle in Dad’s memory, or so I thought. The flame would have brought a warmth and brightness my father would have appreciated. But no one mentioned lighting a
candle, and I wasn’t sure when or how to bring it up. So I just kept my mouth shut.
When I left the cemetery, hastily thanking the rabbi and making excuses to skip out on post-unveiling socializing, all I could think about was how much my father would have hated our stoic gathering. How much more he would have hated me skipping out on the chance to have lunch with my mother and sister after the service. But also, how he would have loved all the blithely cheerful Christmas decorations along the road beside the memorial park.
The inappropriate Christmas crush was something he and I shared: two Jews gazing starry-eyed at every wreath and poinsettia. He would have adored the shimmering streetlights decked with massive, sparkling snowflakes. Mom and Rosie eye-rolled all things Christmas. Dad and I were the holiday apologists in the family, gleefully singing along with “Let It Snow” and “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” and “White Christmas.” Our rule was that we could belt out at full volume any and all of the Christmas songs that don’t directly mention Jesus.
You know, all the best Christmas songs were written by Jews, my father liked to remind anyone who cared to listen, which mostly meant me. He was so damn proud of this little factoid. The thick Wilford Brimley mustache he’d cultivated in the eighties and insisted on maintaining ever since twitched above his smile. Irving Berlin, Johnny Marks, Mel Tormé...any Christmas song worth singing, I guarantee you, some nice Jewish kid wrote it.
Could’ve written some more Hanukkah songs while they were at it, my mother would always interject, as if irritated that all the musically inclined Jews gave the good melodies to the other holiday. Mom was the keeper of the faith, the stalwart, the one worried my little sister, Rosie, and I would drift away from our Jewish heritage if she wasn’t ever-vigilant. For Dad, being Jewish was easy. It was just a built-in part of his identity, no need for maintenance. For Mom, it was a handful of holy sand that she was determined to never let slip through her fingers.
Not a big enough market, Dad said cheerfully. They wouldn’t’ve made a dime.
And then he went back to happily humming “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” off-key.
God, he was a terrible singer. I’d give anything to hear him butcher “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” one more time.
The holiday season has sharpened the dull knife of my grief, twisting it into my side with every unwelcome reminder of my loss. My fortieth birthday is barreling toward me, and I can’t stop thinking about all the things my father has already missed, and all the things he’s about to miss. Milestones like my birthday. And Rosie’s Hanukkah-themed wedding, which Dad would have paid for while rolling his eyes relentlessly. His love of Christmas cheer was the one exception to his general rule of poo-pooing anything over-the-top. He was a jeans-and-baseball-cap guy, a Chicago-dog and deli-sandwich aficionado, a lover of deals and cheap thrills. It was Mom and Rosie who loved spotlights and splurging. Birthday parties and weddings were always moments for them to shine—and for Dad and me to retreat.
He would have loved walking Rosie down the aisle, though. Even if a big holiday wedding with hundreds of guests would have seemed extravagant
to him, he would have been delighted to see Rosie have the wedding of her dreams. His greatest joy was seeing his family happy. That was it; that was all. At every recital, soccer game, graduation, he was always there, dabbing at his eyes and grinning from beneath his massive mustache.
But he won’t be there to get teary-eyed walking Rosie down the aisle. Or to walk me down the aisle, if I ever manage to get married.
The thought hurts, but it’s also a moot point, since I haven’t had a steady boyfriend in years. It seems doubtful that my string of bad relationship choices, and current tactic of flirting with my hot new neighbor by cracking third-grade-level jokes, will lead to me standing under a chuppah anytime soon.
We’re approaching the Southport stop, which means an even larger crowd of commuters will press onto the train. For once, I’m grateful for the incoming crush of additional bodies. Maybe harried holiday travelers will distract me from my darkening thoughts. My stomach rumbles again as the crowd in front of me shifts, riders preparing to either exit or reluctantly make room. Santa once again comes into view. The automated voice calls out that we’re approaching Southport. Closing my eyes briefly, I can almost hear what my father would say to the Santa across the way.
Hey, buddy, this your stop? All the way from North Pole to Southport, huh?
I open my eyes and decide to just go for it. What the hell. As the doors slide open and people pour from the train, I raise my festive cup in greeting.
“Merry Christmas, Santa,” I say.
Santa Claus stands up and lets out the longest, foulest belch I’ve ever heard in my life. The stale smell of booze nearly makes me gag. He looks at me with wet, bleary eyes and grabs his red velveteen crotch, leering at me before stumbling out onto the platform.
Ho, ho, ho.
2
“There you are!”
When I get off the train at Merchandise Mart, Sasha is waiting for me on the platform. That’s unusual in and of itself, because Sasha is always at the office early, knocking items off her to-do list, never exiting the building unless she has a client pitch or remembers she should maybe eat lunch. But what’s really throwing me is the fact that she’s not wearing a coat.
Something’s definitely up.
Sasha grew up in Los Angeles, and her hatred for the cold knows no bounds. She bundles up in sixteen layers as soon as it dips below fifty degrees and stays in her cocoon of coats, scarves, and good fleece leggings until April. But today, she’s standing there in her sharp orange blazer and dark fitted jeans, no hat, no scarf, shaking in her trendy but well-lined Canada Goose winter boots. I enjoy living in a snow globe, but Sasha hates it. Her arms are wrapped around herself, teeth chattering. Even her waist-length dreads look frozen.
“You okay?” I ask, hurrying over to her and unwrapping my scarf from my neck to offer it to her. “Where’s your coat? You get mugged or something?”
“Did you not get my text?” Sasha says, taking my scarf and grabbing me by the elbow.
I haven’t told Sasha that I still keep my phone off most days, only turning it on when absolutely necessary. She knows that was a thing I did right after the funeral, but she doesn’t know it’s still a thing.
“No,” I say instead. “You know I never hear my phone on the train—”
“Shit’s going down at the office.”
“What?”
“Hurry, it’s cold as hell and we can’t be late for this meeting,” Sasha says, rushing me through the turnstile.
“I don’t have any meetings until ten thirty,” I protest.
“Wrong,” she says.
Sasha and I have only been coworkers for a few years, but we’ve been close friends for more than a decade. We met at a party when we were both still relatively new to the city—she was a shivering transplant from California, I was a sort-of-local trying to find my way around the city. I’d just finished a graduate program in marketing at Michigan and had returned to the area to try to launch my career. It was my first time living in Chicago proper, though I grew up less than an hour away from the city.
We hit it off right away and started exploring the city together. We discovered we were both diehard Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans, which came in handy when the weather got too cold for us to want to do anything but binge our favorite show. We both loved our gin martinis extra dirty, preferred savory over sweet, and loved nothing more than making a whole meal out of an array of appetizers: salty, cheesy, deep-fried. We both worked in advertising and had mixed feelings about being really good at convincing people to buy things they might not actually need.
We bonded over our miserable dating lives and our wholesome childhoods. Sasha Green was the daughter of two psychiatrists in LA, while I was the product of a high school physics teacher and a real estate agent in suburban Chicago. Sasha was the iconic best friend I never had in high school or college. We finished each other’s sentences and joked that we shared the same brain. It felt like ours was a fated friendship, meant to be.
Plus, we were both Jewish—something that I didn’t initially assume, since apparently the Ashkenormativity (aka the default assumption that all American Jews are of white European descent) was strong with me back then. I was stunned when she invited me to a seder at her apartment. Turns out her mom’s Sephardic and Ashkenazic, and her dad was raised in the Black Baptist church but converted to Judaism. Sasha was not only Jewish but also had the same damn bat mitzvah portion that I did. It was truly basheret: a match made in heaven.
Sasha was the one who told me about the opening at Mercer & Mercer when I was looking for a bigger agency. She’d been an account executive there for several years, and had some pull. I was working for a cute boutique firm, doing marketing and copywriting and soup-to-nuts services for small clients. I loved it, but as I hit my mid-thirties, I was ready for something that was a little less “cute” and a little more “matches contributions to a 401(k).”
Sasha gave me the heads-up about the senior copywriting job at M&M before the position was even posted. I applied early, even though I felt underqualified. I called my father for a pep talk.
You’ve got this, Evie, he assured me.
It’s what he always told me, no matter what. And while sometimes he was wrong—I didn’t get every job, every audition, every opportunity I went after—every time he said it, ...
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