Devotion. Michelle Herman

filled her eyes. Now? she thought. Now she was crying? She had been dry-eyed throughout the ceremony, though she had imagined she would cry, and she had even wondered whether or not she would hide her tears from Bartha. She stole a sidelong glance at him but he was pondering the wine list, not looking at her. When he spoke her name—still not looking at her—she started at the sound. Before he could say anything else, she said, sharply, “I’m fine.”

      She held her tears back, blinking, as he turned to her. He looked at her quizzically but said only, “So, will you drink a little something? I have found a good wine.” He took one hand off the baby, briefly setting it atop hers where it lay on the tiled tabletop before returning it to its place beneath Alexander’s head. “Or…here is another which is very good.” He closed his eyes, deliberating. “Perhaps we might try both.”

      “Both, yes!” Vilmos said. He slapped his menu down and rubbed his hands together like a character in a novel. “Two bottles of wine, why not?” And to the waitress, he said, “At this table we are celebrating!”

      “The waitress isn’t interested,” said Clara. “Let her do her job.”

      “Did you hear this, Alexander?” Vilmos said, and Esther thought he was about to complain about his wife for once, even if only to the sleeping baby, but he said, “See, we are ordering some good wine so that we may drink a toast to your health. Your family is all around you, little one.” He half stood and leaned over the table so that he could look down at the baby in his cousin’s lap. “Still sleeping? Alexander, you are missing the whole party! Time to wake up, darling boy.”

      He said it quietly, certainly not loudly enough to wake the baby, but still Esther was about to protest, to warn him not to wake the baby, when, as if he’d heard and understood, Alexander did wake up—opening his eyes, yawning and smiling, reaching out with one hand toward Esther—and then suddenly he was asleep again, exhaling a great sigh, before Esther had had the chance to take him out of Bartha’s lap. His right hand had fallen palm-up on his forehead. “Look at him,” Vilmos said. “I think he is saying to us, ‘All of this happiness is making me very tired. Please go ahead and have the party without me.’ He is a very thoughtful baby, I think.”

      “Or else he’s just bored,” said Clara.

      “Bored? This baby? Never!” Vilmos said. “The brilliant are never bored, and our Alexander is a brilliant baby.”

      “Oh, indeed,” said Bartha, laughing. “The most brilliant of babies.”

      “Don’t joke,” Esther heard herself say, though she hadn’t meant to speak. “He is,” she told Vilmos, who as he sat back down reached for her hand.

      “Of course he is, darling.”

      Bartha wasn’t listening. He was busy with the waitress—telling her which wines he’d chosen, and which one of them to bring out first. As soon as he finished, as the waitress turned to leave, Vilmos called to her, “Excuse me, miss, but have you ever in your life seen such a baby? Tell the truth.”

      “A beautiful baby,” said the waitress, without turning.

      “Yes, that’s right,” Vilmos said. “A beautiful and brilliant baby. An excellent baby! What more could one hope for? My own little cousin! My own—oh, now you must tell me, Clara”—he winked at Esther—“tell me if I have this right. My own first cousin…three times removed?”

      “No,” Clara said. “Are you making a joke?”

      “A joke? Naturally not. I am only—”

      “I don’t understand why this is so hard to remember.”

      “I don’t understand either,” Vilmos said sadly, “yet somehow I cannot.” He took his wife’s hand now and at the same time winked again at Esther. “Tell me once more, Clara, please.”

      “Only once more,” Clara said, “and that’s all.” To Esther she said, “I’ve been through this with him half a dozen times. He just can’t keep it in his head.” She shrugged, and Esther shrugged too, looking down at Clara and Vilmos’s linked hands. It always came as a surprise when Clara spoke to her. “Listen closely this time,” Clara said. Then, in a singsong: “You and János are first cousins twice removed. Your grandfather was János’s first cousin. Your great-grandfather, József, and János’s father, Béla—”

      “I remember him very well, my cousin László,” Bartha interrupted her. “We were good friends, very close. But that was long ago. I saw him last before the war, in Budapest. His father, my Uncle József—you have an excellent memory for names, Clara, it is remarkable—he was quite something. Such a temper! László used to come—”

      “—were brothers,” Clara cut in, raising her voice, “and therefore you are twice removed as a first cousin to János, because you are two generations removed from his first cousin. But Alexander and your father are of the same generation”—here she cast a meaningful, angry-looking smile at all of them—“which means that they are second cousins, and you”—once more she flashed that chilly smile like a triumphant scowl—“are thus a second cousin once removed from Alexander.”

      Vilmos slapped his forehead. “Therefore? Thus? To me it’s not so simple, not so obvious.” He sighed. “János is right. You are remarkable.”

      “Don’t be silly,” Clara said. “It isn’t difficult at all. It follows simple rules.”

      “Yes, for a bookkeeper, it’s simple. But for me….” Vilmos shook his head. “Esther, tell me. What do you think?” But before she could respond—I’m no bookkeeper either, she was going to say (and it was just as well she didn’t have the opportunity, for Clara hated being called a bookkeeper, even though there was no other word for what she was in the insurance office where she worked part-time: she kept the accounts, and thus, Esther thought, with a smile she hoped nobody saw, she was a bookkeeper)—Vilmos said, “All right now, you must tell me once again. Just once more, and I promise I will never ask again.”

      “I don’t think you really listen when I tell you,” Clara said. “I don’t know why I tell you anything, I really don’t.” And yet, surprising Esther, she began again: “József and Béla,” she said, “were two brothers, out of five. The other three….”

      Bored, Esther stopped listening. (It occurred to her to wonder if Vilmos was right: if she were brilliant, would she not be bored?) But she was not only bored, she was insulted, too, she recognized belatedly, by the way Clara had spoken of Vilmos’s father and the baby as being of “the same generation.” Between Alexander and Vilmos’s father, another József—whom Esther had never met, and who lived in Fresno, California, the other city Bartha had considered settling them in when they’d first discussed the possibility of leaving Brooklyn—there was a good half century.

      Esther didn’t doubt that Clara had meant to insult her—to remind her of the “inappropriateness” of the match between her and Bartha. She had heard Clara use that word, speaking privately to Vilmos, not long after they had first arrived in Omaha. She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but she’d heard a lot of things she wasn’t meant to hear, living with Vilmos and Clara. Of course, she should not have been surprised by anything Clara had said to Vilmos (it had not been so unlike what Esther’s father had said that last night in Brooklyn—although her father’s language had not been coldly polite, like Clara’s, but vicious and hateful). She should not have been surprised, but still she was. Bartha had told her they would be welcome here. He had implied that she and Clara would be friends, good friends, before long.

      Clara was droning on still: first removed, twice removed, third cousins, grandfathers, great-uncles, even a stepbrother. Vilmos interrupted her repeatedly, encouraging her to name all the brothers if she mentioned one. Evidently Vilmos had taught Clara the names of all his relatives in Hungary, most of them long dead, and now he was showing off her memory to Bartha (who kept joining in, irrelevantly, interrupting both of them to reminisce