Almost a decade had passed since Gramma Weinstein had given up her big old house in Windsor Hills and moved into a cramped apartment in the suburbs northwest of Baltimore. "So urban," she had said, and the family had been pleased at this uncharacteristic rhetorical restraint on Gramma's part. But in the end, the changing neighborhood was less important to her than the cost of maintaining the house, a rambling wreck of a place with rotting wooden shingles and a weed-choked yard. "I am a woman of reduced circumstances," she liked to tell her children and grandchildren. "You know, Poppa didn't leave me that well fixed." They knew, they knew.
Yet Gramma still wanted to entertain on the scale to which she had become accustomed when Poppa was alive. For Judith's birthday dinner, she had invited all five of her children, their spouses, the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren. It added up to twenty people, which would have made her apartment feel like an overcrowded elevator, an elevator filled with tsotchkes and china springer spaniels, each one with its own name and history.
Her children had handled the situation as they always did, by going behind her back. Tess's mother, Judith, called her four brothers and they agreed to draw straws for the dinner. The losers attended, while the others made up credible excuses for why they could not attend. Even Tess's own father ended up wiggling off the hook, claiming a work conflict. The Monaghans and the Weinsteins still didn't get along that well. So the guest list was limited to Gramma, Uncle Jules and Aunt Sylvia, their daughter Deborah and son-in-law Aaron, Uncle Donald, Uncle Spike, Tess and, of course, the guest of honor, Judith, who had organized it all.
"Where is everybody?" Gramma asked, as Judith sliced her birthday cake and passed pieces around the table.
"Commitments," Judith said. "People's lives are so hectic now."
"Well, Isaac and Nathan were always so driven. That's why they're successful. But I'd think your husband might have been here, at least. Don't the Monaghans celebrate birthdays? God knows, they celebrate everything else."
"Patrick's taking me to the Inn at Perry Cabin this weekend." Judith broke off a piece of cake with her fingers and crammed it into her mouth. She'd kill me if I did that, Tess thought.
"A cabin? He takes you to a cabin for your fiftieth birthday?"
"It's a five-star restaurant and hotel, Gramma," Tess said, as her mother's mouth was still full of cake.
"Very fancy, I'm sure. I just can't understand why things can't be like they used to be."
Tess could. It wasn't just the loss of the house, although it had been a wonderful place for parties, that overgrown Victorian perched on a hill above the Gwynn's Falls, full of secret places, like an old dumbwaiter and the remains of a wine cellar. No, it was the loss of Poppa that had changed the nature of their family gatherings. Overworked and overextended, he had still managed to throw his love at them with both hands, like a little kid pushing up waves of water in a swimming pool. Gramma, in defiance of every known stereotype about grandmothers Jewish or otherwise, had served inedible food and begrudged them every mouthful. Unless one ate too sparingly, in which case she was offended.
"Tessie, you're not eating your cake," Gramma said now, watching Tess halve her slice, then divide it again and again. It was hard to find a cake that Tess didn't love, but Gramma always managed, serving a soggy pineapple store brand with the consistency of frozen concentrate straight from the can.
Judith gave her a warning look. As if Tess needed to be reminded of the ground rules for this evening: No candor, no simple truths, nothing that can be construed as an insult. Unless, of course, you were Gramma.
"I'm so full after that wonderful meal."
"Well, Judith can't open her gifts until you finish your cake. Would anyone like another cup of coffee? I'll make some."
"No!" Judith almost shouted in her panic to keep her mother from committing yet another culinary felony. "I mean, I'll make it, Mama. I know where everything is."
"Does it look like Judith is putting on weight?" Gramma asked after she had disappeared behind the kitchen's swinging door. "Or is it that dress?"
You should talk, Tess thought sourly, still breaking her cake into crumbs. Grandma Weinstein was one of those older women who appeared to be all bosom from shoulder to waist. Tess often wondered if this was the fate that awaited her own body, no matter how much she lifted, ran, and rowed. Every day, it seemed, the papers brought more proof that biology was destiny, that genetics would get you in the end.
"You're certainly looking healthy yourself these days, Theresa Esther," Grandma said slyly. Tess flinched. Her grandmother's euphemisms had a way of cutting deeper than anyone else's insults. Needle, needle, needle. It was like going to a bad acupuncturist.
"She's a beautiful girl," said Uncle Donald, missing the subtext as usual. Funny, in his days as a political fixer, he understood the meaning of the tiniest gestures in Annapolis, could predict a bill's fate by the way the speaker scratched his head. But he seemed to miss all the nuances in his own family's interactions. "When I walk down the street with Tess, I see the men stealing looks at her, wondering how an old man like me got such a gorgeous companion."
"Feh," said Gramma, unimpressed. "A woman who puts stock in that kind of attention is like a soup bone who thinks the dog has honorable intentions. Nothing counts until you've got a ring on your finger. Don't forget that, Tess."
Which was the only cue Aunt Sylvie needed: "And when am I going to dance at your wedding, Tesser?"
"When the Maryland General Assembly outlaws the Electric Slide."
Deborah smiled at Tess over her son's head, two-year-old Samuel, named for Poppa. Now thirty-seven, Deborah had spent five years and an estimated fifty thousand dollars to produce Samuel, insistent that her child have the same DNA as his parents. As the Chinese say, be careful what you wish for. Samuel was a miniature Aaron and Aaron, in Tess's estimation, wasn't worth anywhere close to fifty thousand dollars. Deborah might have done better shopping around for some sperm that didn't come with that pale, beady-eye, no-lips gene.
"Oh, Mama, Tess is a career woman," Deborah said. "I heard you opened your own office down on Butchers Hill. How's business?"
"Great." The afternoon couldn't have been worse. Tess and Esskay had canvassed Beale's neighborhood, to see if anyone knew the whereabouts of Destiny, Treasure, Salamon, and Eldon. It turned out almost everyone knew who her client was and those who didn't assumed she was a cop. Neither camp was inclined to help her beyond "Hello," "Nope," and "Good-bye." Oh, they had been polite enough; they just wouldn't talk to her. She had never felt so white before. Until today, she had thought she was pretty good at inspiring confidence in people, but her open countenance and ready smile hadn't beguiled these folks. Not even Esskay, with her ingratiating little snorts, had been able to break the ice.
"Aren't you nervous in that neighborhood?"
"It's not so bad."
"Really? Didn't I read in the paper last week that a prostitute was found near the Patterson Park pagoda, stabbed and beaten?"
Good old Deborah. She probably couldn't name the current president of the United States, but she had managed to find that one-paragraph item in the Beacon-Light.
"Was she black?" Gramma asked.
"The paper didn't say."
"It's not supposed to," Tess said. "They don't put race in unless it's relevant-"
"Black," Gramma decreed. "Well, let them murder one another. She probably left behind five children we'll all have to pay for." Everyone looked at the ceiling, and Uncle Donald cleared his throat nervously, but no one said anything.
Judith poked her head around the kitchen door. "The coffee's ready. Raise your hand if you want a cup."
"Theresa Esther, you lazy girl, get in there and help your mother," Gramma said. "It's her birthday, after all."
As with everything at Gramma's house, there was a strict hierarchy to the gift ritual. Uncle Spike always went first, as his actual relationship to the family remained somewhat dubious. The Weinsteins suspected he was a Monaghan, the Monaghans were sure he must be a Weinstein. He kept everyone guessing by attending all events, even ones like this, where he wasn't actually invited.
This year, he and Uncle Donald had gone in together on Judith's present and when Tess passed the large, heavy box to her mother, she had a sinking feeling. It felt like a piece of electronic equipment. Uncle Spike, a bartender and a bookie, tended to buy such things off the backs of trucks, while Uncle Donald had been known to use his state government job to write awfully creative procurement orders.
"One of those radio-CD players," Judith said happily. "How did you know I wanted one for the kitchen?"
"I've got my spies," Uncle Donald said, winking at Tess. "Is it okay? We can always…exchange it if it's not what you want."
Uncle Spike looked up anxiously from his second slice of pineapple cake. So he had been responsible for finding this year's gift.
"No, no, it's exactly right. Thank you, thank you both."
Uncle Jules came forward next, with a box wrapped with the trademark yellow ribbon and green-and-yellow striped paper of his jewelry store. Every Weinstein woman received one of these boxes on her birthday. Always lovely, but not necessarily quite right for the recipient. Tess had long suspected the pieces were estate items Jules picked up on the cheap, or merchandise he couldn't move. This small box held a pair of sterling silver combs set with turquoise stones, the kind of thing Judith would never wear, although Tess might. Trust Gramma to point that out.
"Jules, those are much too young for Judith. What were you thinking? She's fifty now, after all, getting up in years. Maybe Tessie could wear them, they'd be nice with her eyes. Oh, I forgot. It's Deborah who has the green eyes, yours are more grayish-blue, aren't they, Tessie? Very nice in their own way, though."
One more gift for Mom to open and I am outta here. Tess had presented her gift in private, back at her parents' house. A set of hand-hammered pewter measuring cups, with matching spoons. Judith had seemed to like them, but it occurred to Tess now that her mother, although quite accomplished, found no joy in cooking. As the only daughter of a woman who seemed to revel in destroying food, she had been forced into the kitchen at a young age and remained there by default.
Gramma handed Judith an envelope. It was always an envelope, always with a check for fifty dollars. That is, her four sons and one daughter received fifty dollars, the grandchildren were allotted twenty-five dollars at birthdays and Hanukah. Tess assumed Judith and her brothers received larger checks because the system was structured like war reparations. Those who had suffered the longest received the most.
But instead of the familiar green check with Gramma's spiky handwriting, Judith pulled out a photocopy folded into quarters.
"What's this? It looks like a land deed."
"My big surprise," Gramma said triumphantly. "I'm giving all my children and grandchildren equal shares in that acreage that Samuel left me in north county. It just happens to be part of the parcel where they want to build a new shopping center. The deal should go through later this summer. Poppa finally made a good investment, even if it did take ten years after his death to pay off."
"I'm surprised he didn't have to sell this when he filed for bankruptcy," said Uncle Jules, putting on his reading glasses to inspect the deed. After all, he would share in this windfall, too, as would his Deborah.
"It was a personal investment, held outside the corporation. Samuel wanted to build a house in the country for when he retired. Who knew it would ever be worth anything, so far out? But what was considered far doesn't seem so far anymore, the way people are fleeing the city every day. I paid the taxes and held onto it, and now our ship has come in. My lawyer says we might get as much as two hundred thousand dollars for the land if we play our cards right."
The deed moved around the table, from hand to hand, until it was Tess's turn to study it. Five kids, four grand-kids, two hundred thousand dollars-so this was a chit, worth more than twenty-two thousand dollars. If they played their cards right.
The Weinsteins had finally caught a break. Lord knows they were due. She had caught a break. If the sale went through, she'd have a nest egg, more than enough to float her through the lean times.
Good old Poppa. It was as if he had reached out from beyond the grave and slipped a quarter in the slot, giving her one more ride on the flying rabbit.