A Second-Night Kind of Miracle
Kathleen Gilles Seidel
In September, a month after we married, she invited us for Rosh Hashanah dinner.
I am not a homewrecker. I hadn’t met Dan until his divorce from Ellen was final.
My name is Karen Gold. I’m a financial planner and wealth manager. After nearly twenty years in this business I thought that little could surprise me…until at age forty-three I shocked myself by falling in love.
Intellectually and emotionally, Dan Samuels was a mirror of myself. Never had I met someone who understood me so completely, who valued my strengths and accepted my limitations because they were also his strengths and limitations
We were equally successful professionally but somehow he had managed to find the time to have a family. He and his ex-wife, Ellen, had three children—Sara, a freshman in high school, and two boys, Gideon and Zachary, two and three years younger than Sara.
It was my first time meeting Ellen or being inside the old and stately house in the Spring Valley neighborhood of D.C. Dogs started barking as soon as we rang the bell. Ellen opened it, gripping their collars, calling to the boys to come get them. She was a small, dark-haired woman with a trustworthy, almost Earth Mother aura to her.
I followed her to the back of the house, looking around as we went. Unsorted mail lay in a pile by the front door. On the first two steps of the front stairs were stacks of books and piles of folded laundry that apparently needed to be carried upstairs. Only the front third of the kitchen counters could be used. Lined up against the tiled backsplash were cannisters of rice and beans, boxes of cereal and protein bars, and net bags of onions and potatoes. I couldn’t imagine Dan living in this house.
For me, maintaining a clutter-free home was as natural and easy as breathing. I respect that other people are not that way and that children make neatness immeasurably more difficult, but no wonder Dan, who had to be so detail oriented at work, had found it difficult to breathe here.
He had told me that Ellen prided herself on her cooking, and she certainly was entitled to. The brisket was everything briskets are supposed to be, but often aren’t. She made the challah and honey cake herself. But the table had only been half set when we arrived, and Ellen had to scurry back into the kitchen several times during dinner. First there were no matches for the candles, then no napkins, then no salt.
Dan had praised Ellen as a mother. She enforced sensible rules while still being fun and spontaneous, two words that people did not generally use to describe me. But I always managed to get the salt and the napkins on the table well before a meal was served.
While Dan was asking the kids about their classes and activities, Ellen and I played the necessary Jewish geography, but she had grown up in New York and New Jersey and I in Richmond so the only people we knew in common were the few clients I had whose children went to the same private school as hers did.
Ellen brought up Thanksgiving. “My sister’s neighbors are going to be out of town again,” she said to Dan, “so we don’t have to worry about getting hotel rooms.”
“I won’t be going to New Jersey this year,” he said. “I’m meeting Karen in Switzerland.”
Because the last half of December, with all the end-of-year investment activity, is the most frantic time of year for me, I try to go away in November.
“Switzerland? Are you going skiing?” Gideon asked. When I nodded, he turned to Dan. “Can we go, Dad? Please? Please?”
Dan looked at me. I nodded again, but before he could say anything, Ellen spoke sharply. “No. It is out of the question. We are going to New Jersey. We always do.”
“If Dad doesn’t have to go,” Sara said, “why do we?”
Dan had described Ellen’s sister as a “piece of work,” the sort of woman whose greatest joy was having other people be wrong. The whole family hated their visits there, and from the outside I was baffled that they kept going. How deep did family loyalty need to go?
“What are we going to do if Dad isn’t there? Are we just supposed to sit there?” Zach said. “Mom, you’re in the kitchen the whole time, and we’ll be stuck.”
“Thanksgiving dinner is a lot of work,” Ellen murmured and then said to Dan, “Are you sure you can’t come? Karen would be welcome too, of course, if she wants to come.”
“It’s not a question of can or can’t,” Dan answered evenly. “It’s that I’m not going to. And since, as you say, your sister isn’t going to change, perhaps you shouldn’t go either.”
“Please don’t talk about my sister that way in front of the kids.”
“Oh, come on, Mom,” Sara groaned. “We aren’t idiots. We can see how horrible she is, especially to you.”
Ellen stood up and started to clear the table. “We’re going, and there’s nothing more to be said.”
“So Dad is coming?” Zach asked.
Dan shook his head. “No, I’m not.”
“But you came last year.”
“Zach.” Ellen’s voice was sharp. “I said that was enough.”
She was upset. But did she really think our marriage would make no difference, that Dan would still obediently go along with all her plans?
As we were getting out coats at the end of the evening, she drew him aside, and I overheard her say, “Dan, I need to know that the kids and I still come first with you.”
“The kids certainly do.”
I didn’t mind hearing that. I might have been a cultural anomaly, a Jewish woman who didn’t want children, but I believed that raising decent children was one of the holiest things a Jew—or any person at all—could do.
“But the kids and I,” she said, “aren’t we a package deal?”
“Not entirely,” he said in his precise, lawyerly way. “I care about you, Ellen. I wish you very well. I know that you are essential to the kids. But for me personally, Karen is more important. She is the center of my life now.”
I was glad I couldn’t see her face. She must have been deeply wounded even though she shouldn’t have been. Of course it was hard for her that he had remarried, but that was what had happened.
It soon became clear that in one probably very impulsive moment, Ellen must have confided her hurt to her daughter. After Rosh Hashanah, Sara, who had been mildly tolerant of me all summer, now regarded me as The Enemy.
“Is she going to be coming?” Sara would demand whenever Dan tried to make plans. She now refused to come to our place even though she hadn’t minded visiting before. She became difficult about everything. She could have agreed to something; Dan would have purchased expensive tickets; then at the last minute she would refuse to come.
“I am not going to force her,” Ellen said. “She is entitled to make her own decisions.”
The one thing Sara was willing to do was have Dan take her to the mall and spend money on her. Dan hated going to the mall, and her stores of choice had loud music and crowded racks. But he went.
Professionally Dan was resolute and powerful. He was an attorney, managing a big team of lawyers who worked for regulatory lobbyists. It was very Washington, D.C. kind of work, and he was the biggest of the big guns. But his daughter’s hostility left him feeling bewildered and powerless.
You don’t understand; you don’t have children. Every childless woman heard that over and over. I tried very hard never to speak on things that I didn’t know about and that weren’t my business. The one thing, however, I did know about and that was my business—how my clients were spending their money. Sacrificing their own retirement to fund yet one more unpaid internship for an adult child?
“This is not sustainable,” I would say.
“You don’t understand; you don’t have children” would be the answer.
“I understand what’s in the numbers.”
“It’s not the same,” they would say, and there was no answer to that.
Hanukkah started on a Thursday this year. As she liked to do, Ellen was hosting a big party on Saturday night, inviting seemingly everyone she or the kids had ever met. We would put in an appearance at that. The boys were coming to us Sunday evening, but Sara wouldn’t darken my doorstep. If we wanted to spend time with her—and Dan did—we needed to go to Spring Valley. Ellen invited us for Friday, the second night.
Hanukkah was Dan’s favorite holiday. The family had a tradition of each person having their own menorah and everyone lighting them simultaneously. That had continued even after Dan and Ellen had separated and then divorced. In fact, his menorah was stored with the other four.
While I was willing to go, I was not going to be Cinderella. I was not going to sit there and watch the rest of them chant the prayers and light their menorahs. So I took ours.
Ellen noticed the bag I was carrying. “Oh, Karen, you didn’t need to bring anything. We don’t do presents every night anymore.”
“I know that. This is our menorah.”
“Oh.” Her voice was flat. “I suppose you can go put it in with the others.”
She led me into the dining room. Sara was there, trying to dig out enough old candle wax from the menorahs so the candles could be wedged in. She was a little more carefully put together than usual. She was wearing slim, dark-washed jeans instead of her usual leggings. Her hair was blown out into smooth waves.
“You look nice,” I said as I opened the velvet box that our menorah was nestled in.
She ignored my compliment but frowned at the sight of the menorah. “That looks new,” she said as if she were accusing me of having brought bacon-wrapped scallops to dinner.
“We used it last night.” But I had actually cleaned it afterwards, which apparently was an alien concept in this house.
Dan was in the dining room by now. “Karen and I bought ourselves Judaica as a wedding present to ourselves.”
Sara turned on him. “Why did you do that? Isn’t the kiddush cup your grandmother’s? Why would you want another one?”
“I wasn’t going to take it away from all of you.”
Clearly Sara had not thought about that. “We should have given it to him, Mom,” she snapped. “He was the one with all the Bubbe stories.”
She was looking for something more to feel abused about. “By the way,” she continued, “did Mom tell you that I’m going to a party tonight?’
Dan and I both glanced at Ellen. She had not.
“I’m sorry about that, Sara,” Dan said evenly. He had been looking forward to time with her. “Is there any way you can give it a pass?”
“Why should I? Didn’t you skip Thanksgiving?”
Dan opened his mouth as if to defend himself, but he didn’t speak.
The menorahs were on a table that had been put in front of the dining room window. Another family tradition was that after the candles were lit, Ellen turned off the house lights, and everyone got their coats and went outside to admire their glow. Dan had told me that in the hustle and bustle and the chaos of the family holiday, standing in the dark looking in at the lights, each candle with its own dancing fire, was the one moment where he felt a part of a world that included miracles.
But this was not in Sara’s plan. “We should skip going outside,” she announced. “We did it last night, and we don’t have time. Maddy’s parents are picking me up at eight. And it will look strange with that extra menorah.”
Dan’s lips tightened. “Won’t the extra lights make it more beautiful?” he asked. “That’s what your mother and I always said when we bought the ones for each of you.
Sara turned on him. “Why don’t you call her ‘Mom’ when you speak to us? You always have.”“I’m sorry if that hurt you,” he said.
Ellen was already on her way to the kitchen. She spurned my offer to help get dinner on the table, but asked Dan to come open the wine. The kids disappeared and I was alone in the dining room.
Our menorah was silver and simple, the eight branches curving gracefully away from the center shamas, the “helper” candle used to light the others. Zach’s must have been purchased when he was a baby. It was a blue choo-choo train, each little railroad car holding a candle with the shamas perched on top of the front-end locomotive.
I understood that Sara was full of fear and rage, but I was not going to let her control what I did. I checked the lock on the front door and then stepped outside, keeping my arm out so the dogs didn’t follow.
I pulled my blazer close against the December chill. The lights were beautiful, three in each of the six menorahs. I blinked and the lights blurred. There were no longer six separate menorahs; all the lights were harmonizing together, becoming brighter as they drew from one another’s warmth. How easy it was for them to become one.
“It looks better with the lights off.”
I turned. Zach, the youngest, was on the stoop.
“It is still lovely. Come join me.”
He was eleven. He hadn’t started his growth spurt, and the top of his head was barely at my shoulder. He wasn’t wearing a sweater. He would probably get cold in a minute. I wondered how he would react if I tried to put my arm around him. His sister would have ripped my arm off if I tried it with her.
It didn’t seem worth the risk.
“Is it okay that we’re out here?” he asked.
“I would think so,” I said. Why was he worried about that?
He shook his head, and then— “Sara can be a real shit, can’t she?”
“She’s unhappy.”
“Why did that mean the rest of us couldn’t come out and look at the lights? That’s my favorite part.”
“It’s your dad’s too.”
“Do you think he will come out?”
“Probably not.”
Sara continued to be prickly through dinner. I waited for Dan or Ellen to reprimand her. Neither one did.
Ellen was not one to fry her latkes in advance, having them sit in the oven getting heavy and greasy. She fried them as we ate them. Even with two big cast iron skillets on the stove, she had to get up from the table every few minutes. I was not going to complain; they were quite simply the best latkes I’d ever had in my life. But each delay enraged Sara.
“I’ll drive you,” Dan said, “if we aren’t done in time.”
“That won’t work. Maddy’s not going to want to walk in alone.”
“Is this a new group of friends?” I asked.
She glared at me. How dare I speak to her? “It’s at Joel Fishbein’s.”
That meant nothing to me, but it did to her brothers.
“Joel Fishbein?” Gideon sounded surprised and exchanged a look with Zach. “That’s not Josh’s big brother, is it?”
“So what if it is?” Sara sounded defensive. “What’s the big deal about that?”
“Nothing,” Gideon muttered, but he looked at Zach again.
“Do we know the Fishbeins?” Dan asked. “Are the parents going to be home?”
“Of course they are. Mom—my mother—already asked. It’s a Hanukkah party. His brother is going to be there with his friends. We’re going to light the candles, play dreidel, all that.”
“We trust you, sweetie,” Ellen said. “You know that.”
Trust, maybe; belief, no. I didn’t believe Sara. Play dreidel? They were not playing dreidel. Dreidel is the most unspeakably boring game ever. You have to be very young…or very drunk to enjoy it.
Sara did indeed leave before dessert, and I wasn’t sorry to see her go. The rest of the evening was much more pleasant. As we were leaving, I caught Zach’s eye and nodded toward the corner of the room. He looked startled and had a sudden “Who, me?” expression, but he understood. One of the dogs trotted over with me.
“What do you and Gideon know about this party Sara is going to?” That was one thing about being a quiet person. We often notice things other people miss.
“Nothing.” He was looking down at his feet.
Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. Maybe I had put him in a difficult position. But I had already done it. “But you were surprised.”
“Yeah, I mean, we know Josh, but Joel and that crowd, they’re way cooler than Sara is. I don’t know why she was invited.”
“What do you mean by ‘cooler’?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know…maybe just older. He’s a junior, but he plays lacrosse and most of those guys are seniors.” Because their school had a single campus for K-12, the middle school kids like Gideon and Zach knew the older students.
The dog and I waited for a moment, but Zach had clearly said all he was going to say. I told him that I was looking forward to Sunday, and he muttered something that sounded as if he might be agreeing.
Dan and I had purchased a spacious, modern penthouse condominium in the West End. When we got home, I asked Dan if he wanted to come to the building’s gym with me. “Oh, I should”–he sighed–“but no, not tonight.”
I tried not to think about anything when I was working out. As long as the market hadn’t fallen by more than 300 points, I could do it. More than that, and my brain couldn’t turn off. And now Dan’s daughter proved to be a more powerful force than any of the stock indices.
It was easy to see Dan and Ellen were letting Sara get away with too much, but what should they be doing? It was easy to say parents shouldn’t be too permissive nor too controlling. But where was that line? I certainly had no idea.
At that party. She should not be there.
I had no idea where that thought had come from.
The thought wouldn’t leave. Older…seniors…lacrosse players… I didn’t like the sound of that.
Why not? What was my data? That college lacrosse players had a reputation for being extreme bros? That wasn’t data.
But dreidel? Maybe the guests at this party were all having a splendid time playing dreidel and not because they were in pre-K.
That was enough to make me step off the treadmill and head upstairs.
Dan had fallen asleep in front of a basketball game. That wasn’t like him. I opened up my computer. What was that boy’s name? Joel Fishbein. His brother was Josh.
It took me much less time than it should have to learn that Joel was a junior at the Alden School and his brother Josh was in eighth grade. They lived in McLean, across the river from us in Virginia.
From a client’s experience, I knew that laws in Virginia about underage drinking were nothing to fool around with. They were harsher than those in D.C. and Maryland, the other two jurisdictions in the metropolitan area. The Alden School also had 24/7 policy about student behavior. Alden suspended or even expelled kids who got into legal trouble.
I needed to tell Dan, or even Ellen. Sara was their child. It was not for me to interfere.
Or was it? Shouldn’t I trust my own judgement? And do what? Go over to McLean to pull Sara out by her hair?
I knew I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to confront her hostility and her anger. What if she refused to come? What would I do then?
I’d helped Dan reinvest his children’s college money in a much better funds. I was good at that. Why couldn’t I just stay in my lane?
The Hanukkah miracle of the lights has never stirred me. I don’t understand miracles, and I certainly don’t count on them. The part of the story that intrigues me is Judah Maccabee and his army.
Judah was the son of a high priest; he and his brothers had worked the land. They had been farmers. Without any military experience, the brothers must have developed—and this wasn’t in the picture books, but the realist in me said that it had to have happened—an infrastructure, training camps, weapons manufacture, supply chains, and information systems. They had recruited equally inexperienced clerks, farmers, and scholars and had implemented brilliant guerilla tactics. How had they done that? Had they known that they would be good at it? Or did they just decide that they had to do it, whether they had any experience or not?
And I was afraid to go to a nice home in a rich suburb and extract a young girl?
What if I were wrong? What if Mr. and Mrs. Fishbein answered the door, and the raciest thing happening was a game of Twister?
Had Judah Maccabee worried about being wrong? Probably not.
Ellen and Dan wouldn’t go get her. Dan would defer to Ellen, and Ellen would rely on the fact that she told Sara she could call home any time, no questions, no recriminations. Lots of parents say that; how many of the kids believe it?
So I was going. Just as sometimes part of being a Jew meant you had to become a soldier even when you would rather have your nose in a book—or a scroll—so marrying a man with children meant sometimes you had to act like a responsible steward of their wellbeing
I wasn’t going to present myself as a mom. That would humiliate Sara even more. I went into the bedroom and changed into my least mom-looking outfit, a slim black pencil skirt, a tailored white silk blouse, and my highest heels, those that I wore only when I needed to intimidate someone.
This was my uniform. My childhood Hanukkah book had pictures of Judah Maccabee carrying a sword and a round shield. A pencil skirt and Stuart Weisman heels were my armor.
“What’s going on?” Dan was standing at the bedroom door, still blinking the sleep out of his eyes.
“I’m going to get Sara. I don’t think she should be at the party.”
“We need to call Ellen. She’s the one who told her she could go.”
“You may need to call Ellen. But I don’t. You know she’s going to worry more about Sara being mad at her. Sara already hates me. I have nothing to lose.”
“Ellen also says it’s very important that we not embarrass her.”
I looked at him. “I don’t embarrass people,” I said. “And why do you think I’m dressed like this?”
“I know you mean well—”
“Thank you for that,” I interrupted him, before he could tell me what he thought I shouldn’t do. “And when have we ever questioned each other’s decisions?”
He bit his lip and drew back. Then he nodded slowly. “Do you want me to go with you? I can wait in the car.”
“Let’s not risk her being angry with you too.”
It didn’t take me long to get there. Although the neighborhood was close to the city, the winding street had a country-like feel. There were no curbs and gutters; the streetlights were poorly placed; the house numbers were erratic and hard to see.
But it was easy enough to identify the Fishbeins’ house. It was the one without Christmas decorations. There were enough cars parked in front that I had to turn into a side street and walk to the house.
I was still three houses away when I started hearing the music, loud music of a genre I couldn’t identify. As I climbed the front steps, I noticed a sour smell. Vomit. Someone had come outside to vomit in the bushes. Lovely.
I rang the doorbell, but suspected that no one would hear it. I tested the knob. The door was unlocked.
The music was even louder inside, and I instantly noticed the stale, burnt-rope smell of marijuana.
It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light. I got a quick impression of elegant gray and ivory geometric patterns and a great many young people. A few couples were entwined in the shadowy depths of the sofas and big upholstered chairs. Most of the others had either a beer or red Solo cups in their hands.
Many of them were wearing maroon or orange shirts with “Virginia Tech” or “Hokies” emblazoned on the front. A few were in blue with “AEPi” in gold letters. AEPi was the Jewish fraternity at Virginia Tech.
These were college students. Sara was fourteen.
I looked around for some genuine adults but saw none. There was a menorah on a table. It was surrounded by crumpled pieces of gold foil. The kids had clearly unwrapped and eaten the Hanukkah gelt, the gold-wrapped candy coins used for playing dreidel. The menorah itself had not been lit. All the three candles, the shamas and the two for the second night, were unburnt.
Empty bags of chips littered the floor. A Solo cup lay on its side, a deep purple stain spreading across the ivory carpet. A couple was coming down the stairs. The boy looked disheveled and the girl’s shirt was on inside out. They must have been in one of the bedrooms.
I had been right to come.
A few kids had noticed me. “I’m looking for Sara Samuels,” I asked. “Is she here?”
“If she’s one of Joel’s friends,” one of the girls said, “I think they’re in the basement.” She waved toward a door.
I turned on the staircase light. Splotches of purple punch made a trail all the way down the carpeted stairs. Apparently the person carrying the punch hadn’t realized the cup had tilted. Or didn’t care.
I didn’t suppose the Fishbeins would be thrilled at the state of their carpets.
It was less dark down here, the music less loud, and the marijuana odor less distinctive, but there were plenty of Solo cups, and no one was playing dreidel, or even Twister. On the sofa a guy was sitting close to a girl, his body turned toward her. He was playing with her hair. She didn’t look as if she liked it. He was indeed wearing an Alden School lacrosse shirt.
Another kid had a girl cornered. I couldn’t see her face, and he wasn’t touching her, but she could have felt trapped.
I looked for Sara. She was sitting on the raised fireplace hearth with another girl her age. They were both sitting stiffly and looked as if they didn’t know what to do with themselves.
She scrambled to her feet as soon as she saw me. “Karen! What are you doing here?”
At the sound of her voice, the kid on the sofa straightened and let his hand fall. The one in the corner stepped away from his prey, and she scurried away. At least the boys knew their behavior wouldn’t withstand adult scrutiny.
I went over to Sara. “I’m here to take you home.”
“But Mom said I could come.” Her voice was defiant, but she wasn’t looking at me with the hard glare.
I felt a spurt of sympathy for her. It had been a thrill to have been invited to this party. It had seemingly elevated her status. She had longed to come; she had been sure she would have a good time. She had told her parents that the party would be fine. How could she admit that it hadn’t been, that she was uncomfortable and wanted to go home?
“I don’t imagine that your mother entirely understood the nature of the event.”
“I didn’t know it would be like this.” She shoved her carefully arranged hair behind her ear. “When Joel said his brother would be here, I assumed it would be Josh. I had forgotten about Ben.”
Ben must be a Virginia Tech student, home on winter break.
A door opened—perhaps to a bathroom—and a light flashed across her face.
She had her mother’s eyes and hair, but her cheekbones, the line of her jaw, and the shape of her ears were Dan’s. She was his daughter, the bone of his bone, the flesh of his flesh. She was his legacy, his gift to the world, to the Jewish people. How precious that made her.
Here was a ship I was willing to go down on.
I didn’t know if that was love or not…but it was definitely something.
The girl Sara had been sitting with came up to us. “Mrs. Samuels?”
It was very odd to hear that. I had not changed my name. “Yes?” And then, trying to let the warmth I felt come out in my voice, I added, “What can I do for you?”
“If you’re here to get Sara, I was wondering if I could get a ride home too. I’m Maddy. My dad was supposed to come pick us up, but …ah, it would save him a trip.”
It would also save her from him finding out what was going on.
“Of course.”
“And Rachel,” Maddy said, “could we take her too? I don’t think we should leave her. We’re kind of worried about her.”
Maddy gestured toward a spot near the fireplace. A girl was slumped on a floor cushion; her eyes were shut and her face flushed.
“They told us the punch wasn’t spiked.” Sara said. “But we”—she waved her hand between Maddy and herself—“thought it was and told Rachel to stop drinking it, but she wouldn’t.”
“Then we’ll definitely take her with us. In fact, do you have other friends here?” I asked. “Why don’t you round them all up?”“How many seatbelts do you have?” Maddy asked.
I suppose an actual mom would have thought about that. In fact, I didn’t even know for sure if I had four seatbelts or five. Almost no one ever rode in the back seat of my car. “Let’s get outside. We’ll worry about that later.”
I went to help Rachel stand up. Her eye make-up was smudged and her speech was slurred, but she was responsive.
Two other girls were with Sara and Maddy. They looked relieved to be leaving. “We didn’t know there were going to be college students here,” one of them said. “Really we didn’t.”
In a year or so these girls might be used to parties with marijuana, alcohol, and college kids, with people vomiting in the bushes and going upstairs to have sex, but they weren’t yet.
“I believe you. Is this all the freshmen?” I asked. “Weren’t there any guys?”
Maddie shook her head. “No, they only invited freshman girls. We were surprised by that.”
They shouldn’t have been. What on earth was wrong with these young men? Inviting the youngest of the girls, spiking the punch, and then lying about it.
I had heard Ellen discourse on toxic masculinity, but what were she and Dan going to do to keep Gideon and Zack from becoming this?
No, what were the three of us going to do? This was my responsibility too. I had been living in a bubble to think that it wasn’t.
Only Rachel seemed to be impaired. I had to put my arm around her to help her up the stairs. I held onto her while the other girls went to get their coats and purses.
I might not look like a mom, but the kids upstairs had recognized me as a representative of the adult world. There were fewer beer bottles in sight, and a wad of paper towels sat on top of the biggest stain. Two guys were waiting for us by the door. My guess is that they were the older two of the three Fishbein brothers.
“You don’t have to worry about anyone drinking and driving,” the older one tried to assure me. “We’ve got designated drivers.”
“Are your parents home?”
He shook his head. “But they’ve been here other times. They always say that they would rather have us drink here when they can keep people from driving.”
I had no idea if that was a choice I would have made. I had never had to think about these things before. “Did you know that these girls are fourteen?”
He shot a look at his younger brother, who shrugged.
“Well, then, as long as they’re leaving, it’s no harm, no foul,” said Ben blithely. “There’s no need for anyone to call the police.”
The girls were back. “The police?” one girl gasped. “Has someone called the police? My parents will kill me.”
“You didn’t call the police, did you?” Sara hissed at me.
“No, I didn’t. At least not yet.” I truly didn’t know what my responsibility here was. I was completely unprepared. I had a lot to learn. “But my guess is that in this kind of neighborhood someone else will do it.” I herded the girls toward the door.
“Are you going to tell our parents?” Maddy asked when we were outside.
“Honestly, I don’t know.” I was texting Dan as I spoke, telling him to drive over and meet us at my car. “I don’t know your families. I am going to have to talk to Sara’s mom and dad.”
“But your mom is cool, isn’t she, Sara?”
“She’s not that cool,” Sara said.
I waited until we were around the corner. “Here’s the one thing I do know, girls,” I said. “Tell your parents the truth. The party wasn’t what you were expecting so you left with”—with what? A responsible steward?—“Sara’s stepmother?”
“What about Rachel?” one asked.
Rachel was a different matter. She was leaning against the car looking queasy. “She can ride with me,” I said, hoping I wasn’t going to end up with purple vomit all over my car. “When we get to her house, I’ll go inside with her and talk to her parents.” That would be another Judah Maccabee moment. “Now Sara’s dad will be here in—”
“Oh, my god, look!” one of the girls nearly shrieked.
We all turned. Even being around the corner, we could see a revolving light brushing against the branches of the sparse wintry trees.
“Is that a police car? Has it stopped at Josh’s?”
“I imagine so,” I said.
Silently we watched as the lights from a second police car joined the first. Hanukkah was the festival of lights, wasn’t it? Two police cars, one for each night.
The girls were limp with relief. They were clearly imagining having to call their parents and tell them that they needed to come to the county jail. “Oh, Mrs. Samuels, thank you…if you hadn’t come…we might have been…”
Sara wasn’t saying anything. She didn’t kiss me or swoon with gratitude. This was, after all, only the second night of Hanukkah. And was the second night so much of a miracle? The first one clearly wasn’t. People had lit the lamp, knowing they had twenty-four hours. That it was still burning twenty-five hours later wasn’t such a big deal. It could have been something with the wick; perhaps it was drawing less oil than usual.
Sara didn’t even take her hands out of her pockets, but she shifted her arm and let it touch mine.
At first I thought it might be an accident, but she left it there. It was deliberate. It meant something.
Some of those early Jews must have sat up all through the second night wanting to savor every bit of the sacred light, expecting that at any moment it would flicker out. They would not have at first suspected that they were in the presence of a miracle, but as the hours passed, they must have started to feel hope, starting to think maybe this wasn’t something with the wick, that maybe a miracle would happen.
As I stood there on that dark suburban street, feeling the warmth of my stepdaughter’s arm against mine, I felt hope. That was enough for the second night.