Introduction

“An engaging and heartfelt portrayal of intergenerational trauma and hope.”?Kirkus Reviews

When Ida and her daughter Bessie flee a catastrophic pogrom in Ukraine for America in 1905, they believe their emigration will ensure that their children and grandchildren will be safe from harm. But choices and decisions made by one generation have ripple effects on those who come later?and in the decades that follow, family secrets, betrayals, and mistakes made in the name of love threaten the survival of the family: Bessie and Abe Weissman’s children struggle with the shattering effects of daughter Ruby’s mental illness, of Jenny’s love affair with her brother-in-law, of the disappearance of Ruby’s daughter as she flees her mother’s legacy, and of the accidental deaths of Irene’s husband and granddaughter.

A sweeping saga that follows three generations from the tenements of Brooklyn through WWII, from Woodstock to India, and from Spain to Israel, How to Make a Life is the story of a family who must learn to accept each other’s differences?or risk cutting ties with the very people who anchor their place in the world.

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Excerpt

Jenny

1986

It had been little symptoms that finally led them to Dr. Paul Winter, the neurologist recommended by their GP: a weakness in his legs, a slight loss of balance, an occasional trembling in his arms and hands. They told each other that it would turn out to be nothing but the aging process. But when she thought about it now, she realized that those first symptoms had not only been about his physical condition, but they already signaled the end of the self-confident, take-charge man he had been his whole life.

After her mother, who had been living with them for five years, deteriorating from Alzheimer’s and diabetes, died, they had gone to Spain to celebrate their fortieth wedding anniversary. Early in the morning on their first day in Toledo, they walked from their hotel, up the hill into the old city through winding cobbled streets so narrow only carts could go through.

The houses leaned precariously. They had beautiful ironwork balconies with women leaning over and talking to neighbors below. Jenny tried to make out the words from her rusty high school Spanish, but she could not understand what they were saying.

Except when she heard a woman standing above them on the hill, shouting and pointing, “Mira, Mira. Dios! Mira, Mira.”

Jenny and Harry raced up the hill following her pointing finger and stood at the crest staring at a yellow stucco building with a black wrought-iron balcony on which a woman staggered, blood pouring from her neck, which was slashed open from ear to ear. She bent forward and back like a pendulum, the weight of her body throwing her over the railing, and as she tumbled to the ground, her long black hair floated in front of her and one single brown leather slipper fell from her foot in an arc. The sound—thwump—reverberated as she hit the cobbles, and she lay splayed on the ground, arms and legs outstretched.

A crowd assembled around the body; someone was crouching over it, and people were chattering to one another. No one seemed to be doing anything. Harry was staring up at the glass door behind the balcony. “There he is,” he said, pointing.

Jenny just saw a blurry shadow of a man, and then he was gone.

“He’s going out the back,” Harry said. “I’m going to get him—the bastard.” He turned to run up the street that wound behind the house with the balcony.

Jenny was terrified, but there was nothing she could do. It was so like Harry to act as if he were still a major in the Marine Corps, taking charge during emergencies. Why did he always do this? She peered around the corner but saw nothing. Her heart was pounding. She could just see the body of the dead woman between the legs of two men who were standing guard. Jenny heard the two-toned siren of the emergency cars and looked up to see the police running down a side street, waving their arms and shouting at the crowd. Where was Harry? She was so frightened. What would she do if anything happened to him?

It seemed interminable before he came, limping slowly around the corner, his head down, shoulders hunched. She ran to him, clasped his arms. He held her tight, burying his head in her hair. She reached up to stroke his cheek.

“Did you see him?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m an idiot!”

Jenny patted his shoulder. “No, you’re not.” He looked so vulnerable and sad, she wanted to comfort him. “You just wanted to help,” she said. “The police are here now. Leave it to them. They know what to do.”

Harry turned and together they watched as the police pushed the crowds back away from the body, gesticulating, yelling instructions. Two orderlies trotted up with a stretcher between them and moved the body onto it. Police were moving among the crowd, talking to the bystanders. One came over to them when he spotted Harry and Jenny.

“We don’t speak Spanish,” Harry said before the policeman could ask anything.

“Ah,” the policeman said. “Yes . . . Si. I speak little English.” He hesitated, trying to put words together.

Jenny rushed in. “We saw a man in the window,” she said, pointing.

“You saw a man,” he repeated?

“Yes . . . in the window.”

“Por favor, can you describe him?”

Jenny and Harry looked at each other. What exactly had they seen? Jenny wanted to be helpful but could not remember anything except a shadow.

Harry said, “It was fast, blurry. We only saw him for a second. But he had dark hair, was wearing a green shirt, and he looked big.” Harry held his hands out, describing someone fat.

Jenny was amazed. How had he seen that? All she had seen was a shape; she squeezed her eyes shut, imagined the scene again. Was there really a blur of green and a dark-haired man? It must have been. Harry was good at that kind of thing.

The policeman nodded, thanked them, asked for their names and the hotel they were in and wrote it all down. Then Harry and Jenny were left alone. Not knowing what else to do, they continued their walk, holding tight to each other’s hands for comfort.

They were sitting at a tavern drinking icy beer when she asked him how he remembered a big man with a green shirt. “It must have been your old Marine Corps training in observation. I didn’t see anything but a blur.”

He took time to answer, then shook his head. “I’m a fake,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“I told you I didn’t see the guy—the murderer—when I ran around the corner, but I did. I saw him. He was coming out of the building. He was wearing a green shirt with blood all over it. He was a big guy like I said to the police, with dark hair, but I didn’t know that when I saw him from the street. I could only describe him because I saw him run out of the building with blood all over.”

Jenny stared at Harry. “And then? What happened then?”

“Then? I chickened out. My hand started to tremble. I couldn’t stop it. I saw him, and I knew he was the murderer, and I was shaking. He was big and young and stronger than me, and I don’t know the language, and I’m sixty-seven years old, for god’s sakes. I started after him, but I just couldn’t do it.”

Jenny blew air out of her mouth, reached over and touched his hands. “No, of course you couldn’t. I’m glad you didn’t go after him.”

Harry pulled his hand away. “You don’t understand. I wanted to stop him. I started after him. But I was scared. Me. Scared. My hand was trembling and then I . . . I stepped forward and I fell. My legs just went out from under me.”

“You fell? So that’s why you were limping. So okay, you tripped. Did you hurt yourself?”

“No, no,” he said. He sounded exasperated. “I didn’t trip. My legs just couldn’t hold me. They collapsed under me.”

Jenny stared at him, uncomprehending. “Are you all right now?

“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t believe my arm was trembling like that. I’ve never been scared like that. Not since the war.”

The waiter came and asked in Spanish if they wanted another beer? They shook their heads, no. She shifted in the chair. Her heart was pounding.

Harry’s face was gray. “It’s not the first time,” he said.

“What isn’t the first time?”

“The shaking. The weakness . . . I almost fell last week, but I stopped myself . . . I feel . . . strange.”

“Strange? Like sick?”

“No. Not sick. Just strange.”

They went back to the hotel, both caught in their own dark thoughts. For two more weeks they traveled, and they didn’t talk about it, but Jenny watched him. She noticed that he tired easily when they toured, that he held the banister for balance when he went down the stairs, that he had trouble standing when he rose from a chair. By the time they went home to New York they both agreed that he should go for a check-up. Their GP sent them to Dr. Winter.

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Winter had said after a series of tests. “I think you have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.” Jenny and Harry looked confused. “You don’t know what that is?” he asked. They shook their heads and Dr. Winter took a breath. “You ever hear of Lou Gehrig’s disease?”

Jenny sat motionless. Then Harry said, “Who hasn’t?”

Dr. Winter nodded. “That’s what you have; Lou Gehrig’s, or ALS.” The shock stopped Jenny’s breath. Time pooled around them.

“Are you sure?” Harry asked after a long time.

“The early stages are hard to diagnose. But yes, I am sure that is what it is. You have ALS. I’m sorry.”

That’s how their education began: what amyotrophic lateral sclerosis did to muscles, the vagaries of its progression, the different ways it manifested in different people, the adaptations they had to make in their daily life to the losses that were chipping away at Harry’s six-foot, muscular body, the timeline of the long, slow decline to the respiratory failure that would probably end his life.

With Harry the losses started in his legs. For a while he carried on as he always had, making sure he walked close to the wall, so he could catch himself if he lost balance. Soon he accepted the three-prong cane Jenny got for him, and he walked leaning heavily on it—to his law office, to restaurants, shows, concerts, museums. Deliberately they continued to live the life they had always lived. When, after ten months, the cane wasn’t enough, he moved to a walker, then a wheelchair. He did it with a grace and lack of whining that made Jenny’s heart swell. It made her ashamed of her own frequent and secret resentment of her caretaker role.

They had known, when they looked ahead, that there was inevitability to where this would end. Harry characteristically didn’t talk too much. He made sure his will was up to date and he left clear instructions for his end-of-life care. “I don’t want any extraordinary efforts just to keep me alive,” he said. He talked to the doctor about whether he wanted feeding tubes for nutrition and hydration, about quality of life. Jenny was always with him. She thought she knew what all his wishes were.

But she was surprised one afternoon, when he wheeled himself into their bedroom, his face mottled with anger. “I’m so fucking sick of being nice to everyone,” he raged. His voice was still strong then, and he spoke with power. “If I hear from one more person, that ‘everything happens for a reason,’ like there’s a silver lining here, I’m going to tell them to go fuck themselves. Everything doesn’t happen for a reason. Sometimes it’s just god dammed bad luck!”

Jenny was stunned. Are people still so stupid, she thought? She remembered friends saying those very words to her each time she had a miscarriage before finally getting pregnant with George and carrying him to term. She remembered her rage then and how she stopped her mouth when she wanted to scream at them. They were so smug, so patronizing.

She remembered that Harry had spoken for her, saying to one particular friend of theirs, “Since none of us can fathom why Jenny is suffering so much, perhaps it is best not to make reference to the reasons.” His tone had been withering. The woman had slunk away. Jenny couldn’t remember who she was now. But she did remember how grateful she had been to him for sticking up for her that way.

“Who said it to you?” she asked now.

“It doesn’t matter who said it. I’m not going to listen to it anymore. And I’m not going to lie to people and tell them I’m fine when inside I’m cursing my luck. I have too little time left on this earth to spend it making people feel good about themselves.”

Jenny crouched beside him. “Of course,” she said. “You can say anything you want.”

“I’m so sick of all the niceties, the way we gloss over things and don’t speak honestly.” He was quiet for a minute, then said, “We do that too, Jenny, don’t we?”

“What?”

“We don’t speak the truth.”

Jenny was silent, considering. She looked away afraid he would see in her face her own resentment at what her life had become.

“I don’t want us to be like that anymore,” Harry said. “I want us to tell the truth to each other. To say everything we haven’t said in forty years. I want the time I have left to matter.” Harry looked straight into Jenny’s eyes. “I’m counting on you, Jenny. Nothing left unsaid.”

She nodded, stroked his cheek. “Can I sit with you?” she asked. She didn’t wait, but curled up on his lap, her head against his chest. His chin rested on top of her head. She felt his chest move up and down as he began to cry, silently at first, then louder. In minutes she was weeping too, then realizing that if she were going to tell the truth, she would howl with pain. She let loose and Harry did too, and soon they were crying as loud as they could, and finally, with great heaving sighs, spent with the emotion, they stopped. They looked at each other. Jenny saw Harry’s tear-streaked face. She leaned and kissed his cheeks and licked his salty tears. She sobbed again, and the sob turned into a laugh, and then they were both laughing together until that was done too.

She sat nestled on his lap, unbuttoned his shirt, rested her cheek on his bare skin, and felt the soft hairs on his chest. After a long silence their breathing synchronized.

“Remember, Jenny,” he whispered. “Only the truth.”

She nodded. But she wondered if she would be able to keep this promise. There were some truths she had never told him. Why would she want to start now?

They went on with their lives. Friends came over. Jenny, who loved to cook, made scrumptious dinners for them, and Harry presided at the table, and the conversations were as lively and interesting as they had always been. As the disease traveled up his body, he couldn’t manage his fork anymore, so Jenny would feed him earlier, and he would sit and talk to the guests. He was using an electric wheelchair now, so he didn’t have to push the wheels with his hands.

Harry and Jenny didn’t change the frequency of the conversations they had together, but they did change the topics. One of them, usually Harry, would say, “Tell me something I don’t know about you, something you never said to me.” And Jenny would dig back and tell him stories. Her stories were about the early years with her sisters, particularly Ruby—sweet, funny stories. How she had adored Ruby when she was little, the things they had done together, how they sang together and harmonized. And then, because Ruby had chosen her as her favorite sister when they were growing up, Jenny had become the responsible one, the one who cared for her all the years, as she got sicker.

“You’ve always been the caretaker, haven’t you?” Harry asked.

She nodded and looked away. “It seems like there’s one in every family.”

“Don’t you resent it?”

“No,” she said, too quickly.

“Jenny? We promised.”

Jenny forced herself to look back at Harry. She swallowed. “Sometimes I do.” Her heart was pounding. “Sometimes I feel like screaming, ‘Why me? Why do I always have to be the one?’ But then I look at you and I’m so ashamed. You didn’t ask for this either. Who am I to complain?”

“You have a right to complain. We can bitch and moan as much as we want to. Go in the bathroom, close the door, and holler.” Harry started to yell over and over, “Shit, fuck it all! Why me?” As he yelled his face got redder, and the vein in his forehead pulsed.

Jenny almost laughed it seemed so contrived. “Be careful, Harry. You’ll have a stroke.”

“So what?” Harry stared at her, eyes blazing.

Jenny stared back. She was suddenly terrified of what she would say: You’ll die. I want you to die so this will be over! She ran into the bathroom and began to scream. She pounded the wall, crying, cursing. There was a deep black pool of rage that she had never touched; it was bottomless. She slid down and sat on the cool tile floor and cried until she hiccoughed, filled with a mixture of shame and relief. It was a familiar feeling—one she’d had after Ruby committed suicide, when she realized that under all the caretaking and worry, she had wished her sister dead.

After a while, calmer, she washed her face and went back out to Harry, who had wheeled himself to the window and was looking out. She stood behind him, not touching him.

Some days Harry would tell her stories. Jenny was amazed at what she didn’t know about him after all these years of marriage. His war stories were particularly poignant to her. The details he remembered of the men he had led into battle in Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the fear and the blood and the death, touched her. He would cry sometimes when he spoke of those years, and then, embarrassed, say, “Dr. Winter said I would sometimes laugh or cry for no reason. It’s part of the disease.”

“But this isn’t for no reason,” Jenny said. “Your stories are wonderful. You should write them down.”

He raised an eyebrow. “If I could hold a pen,” he said.

Jenny got him a stenographer from a secretarial service, because he didn’t want to use a secretary from his law office, to come three times a week and take down his memories and type them up so she could put them in a binder.

One day, after having noticed that he was sometimes slurring his words, and that the effort to speak tired him, Jenny said, “Your language—it seems like you are having a little more difficulty speaking.”

Harry hesitated. Then he nodded and spoke with deep pauses between phrases, “I am . . . I’m afraid it’s going to get harder and harder.”

“Maybe a speech therapist could help.”

“Maybe,” he said.

The speech therapist helped a little, but she was candid. “The disease is progressing. Soon it may be too difficult for you to have long conversations.” She didn’t say what was on their minds . . . that soon he wouldn’t be able to speak at all.

That night Harry said, “Come talk to me, Jenny.” Jenny pulled a chair up next to him. He didn’t say anything for a long time.

“Is there something particular you want to talk about?” Jenny asked.

“Yes,” he said. They were quiet again. He swallowed several times, breathed, used the propulsion of breath that the speech therapist had taught him to help get the words out clearly. “I have a confession to make.” Again, he stopped.

“Yes?” Jenny felt her pulse racing. “What? What is it?”

He swallowed again. “There was a time,” he said, “when I was . . .” breath “convinced that you were in love with Victor.”

Stillness in Jenny. Harry’s eyelid pulsed, a small twitch. Jenny opened her mouth to say something, but Harry continued speaking. “I felt . . . anguish. I was afraid to ask you, but I was so convinced it was true . . . I had an affair with one of the secretaries in my office.”

Jenny’s mouth stayed open, now in surprise.

“You probably . . . never even noticed,” he said.

Jenny thought back, furrowed her brow. In truth she didn’t know what he was talking about. She knew she should ask, When? When did it happen? But it seemed so irrelevant, so unimportant now. “I don’t remember it,” she said.

“Do . . . you care?”

Jenny saw it was harder for him to speak, the longer the conversation went on. She thought carefully. She got up, walked to the window and looked outside. The streetlights were on and gleamed through the windowpane. She had promised him the truth. She did not care that he had an affair, certainly not now. Maybe she wouldn’t have cared then either. “Does it matter now? It was so long ago. What difference does it make?”

“Don’t you want to know . . . how it happened? How long it went on . . . Who it was with?”

Again, she searched. “No. I don’t think so. Do you really want to go into all that now?”

“Only if it . . . matters to you.”

He wants it to matter to me, Jenny thought. He wants me to care who it was with and why he did it. He wants to dredge it all up.

Suddenly he said, “Did you love Victor?”

This is so stupid, she thought.

“Did you?”

“What difference does it make now?” she repeated.

“It makes a diff . . . difference,” he said. “Because it stands between us. How can we understand each other if we always hide things?”

“Everyone hides things.” Jenny said.

“I don’t want . . . hide things anymore.”

“Okay.” Jenny cleared her throat, pushing down the anger. She would tell him something. It was hard to talk. “When he first came to the house, when Papa first brought him, I had a crush on him. A terrible crush. Then he and Ruby got married, and after Joseph and Sarah were born, I had to help out a lot with their care because Ruby was so depressed. Victor and I were close . . . maybe I did love him then. But I didn’t even know you, and I knew it couldn’t turn into anything. I had to get on with my life. I met you, and you were wonderful and handsome. And we had our life, and they had theirs.”

The stillness between them was immense, a thing that was there in the room. It encompassed all the events of all the years since she’d met Victor:

—the time she went to tell Victor not to marry Ruby because she was mentally ill

—the time after Joseph was born when she and her mother went to take care of him because Ruby was catatonic in a corner of the living room

—the time she touched Victor’s wrist, looked at the fine silky black hairs on his arms, and knew she would betray Ruby if Victor wanted her

—the time she met Harry, a tall rugged lawyer who adored her and took charge of her life

—the summer days in the bungalow colony when Ruby had her spells and danced up and down the road with whoever would partner with her or stripped naked and tried to swim the lake and almost drowned

—the afternoon in the bungalow when Ruby slept drugged in the next room after Jenny and Pauline had pulled her, half drowned from the lake, and she and Victor sat watch

—the inevitability of their love affair.

—the out-of-the-way motel rooms in Connecticut and New Jersey where they could have a quick lunch in a nearby diner and then slip into the motel room and out of their clothes to make hasty love

—the smell of sex that followed Jenny home and how she washed and washed herself, regretting that she couldn’t hold onto the tangible fragrance of Victor’s aftershave

—the final end of the affair when Irene barreled into her apartment and shouted, “This has to stop”

—the going on as if nothing had happened until finally it was so far in the past it was as if it never had.

Now Jenny kept still. She thought of the promise she had made to Harry to tell the truth. Well, she thought, I did tell the truth. I told as much of it as I could.

“So that was it then? A crush you had before we were married? You didn’t love him then?”

His eyes, locked on hers were so deep, hypnotizing almost. Jenny licked her lips. A word stuck in her throat. Once. She didn’t say it. She said instead, “I love you, Harry. You have given me a wonderful life.” That, at least, was true.

They breathed together, synchronizing, in, out, in out, something they had begun to do since he was having more difficulty speaking and breathing. “I was so afraid,” he said, forcing the words out. “All these years since Ruby died, I was afraid that you would leave me for Victor.”

Jenny felt desolate. She suddenly remembered how after Ruby died Harry had doted on her, brought her unexpected presents, spent more time at home with her. She ached for him, reached out and took his hand. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

The moment passed. “I’m tired, Jenny,” Harry said. “I think I’ll go to bed now.”

They went on with their lives. There were more changes. Harry couldn’t eat real food. He went on a liquid diet, but swallowing became more difficult, and he would choke on his own saliva. He lost weight. The doctor talked to him about a feeding tube, but Harry was resistant.

“ALS is the cruelest disease,” Jenny said to their son George and his wife, Anni, one evening when they came to visit. They were sitting at the dining room table, drinking tea. Harry was asleep. “He’s locked in his body now. His eyes show he understands everything but talking is so hard for him. Most people can’t understand him.”

George nodded. “He seems to want to tell me things, ask me things. He apologized for not spending enough time with me as a kid, and when I said that wasn’t true, he got mad. ‘The truth. I want the truth,’ he said.” George shook his head. “I’m not sure what he wanted me to say. I told him he was the best dad ever. I reminded him of how when he found out I was interested in music, he got me the best clarinet teacher we could find. That he loved to listen to me play. As I was talking, he started to cry . . . not loud, but silent. You know the tears just sliding down his cheeks.” George shook his head. “It made me want to cry too.”

“I don’t know what to say either.” Jenny looked at her son. He was only thirty-two and already a little overweight. Anni was as beautiful as ever, lithe as a cat with dark curly hair. They didn’t have children, and Jenny had stopped asking about it, remembering her own trauma trying to get pregnant with George. Now she repeated what Harry had said that morning. “You’re a good son, George. Your father told me that this morning.”

After Anni and George left, Jenny went into the bedroom, undressed, and slipped into the bed she still shared with Harry. She had refused to sleep elsewhere since he was sick, even though he had told her she should. He was lying on his back, but pillows supported his upper body so he could breathe better. His eyes were closed; soon he would need a breathing apparatus, Jenny thought, so he could get enough oxygen. And then? She didn’t want to think about then or afterward.

She lay on her side, her body pressed against his, and put her arm over his chest, feeling it rise and fall with each breath. She breathed with him. Slow and steady was his breath, and hers. She didn’t know if he was really sleeping, but she whispered, “I thank you Harry, for the wonderful life you gave me. I love you. That is all the truth there is.” Then she closed her eyes, and, breathing with him, fell asleep. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the author:

1. How one generation’s choices and actions affect the next generation is an important theme in How to Make a Life. What are the ways this is expressed in the book through the generations? Have you experienced or seen repeated generational themes in your own life and family?

2. Most families have secrets. What were the secrets that Weissman family members kept from one another and what impact did these secrets have?

3. In what ways does Ruby’s mental illness affect the family? Do you know someone in your life whose mental health or physical health needs impacted on your family’s functioning? How did this affect your family?

4. Bessie and Abe make a bargain with Victor to get him to marry Ruby? Did they think this was a fair and just bargain? What were the family’s feelings about it? What were the consequences of this agreement?

5. Jenny is the self-described “Watcher” of Ruby. How does this responsibility frame her life? Who benefited from this arrangement? How?

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