Cool.
It’d been busy the last time, but dinner had still felt intimate. Now the size of the gathering had exploded. People spilled out the French doors and onto the lawn, where multiple tables had been set up. I made my way toward one with Noah and a cluster of other teens: some Barbanel cousins I’d met last week, some strangers with dark curly hair. Shabbat candles and challah sat in the centers of the tables. Everything was painfully familiar.
I almost felt like I belonged here, because I did belong to these traditions, which meant I almost belonged to these people—but I didn’t belong to Golden Doors, and in any case, belonging wasn’t my actual goal. My goal was to talk to Edward Barbanel. To see if he would share my grandmother’s letters; to see if he knew about any records concerning her. To ask him about the necklace without making him shut down.
I stopped behind Noah’s chair. “Does it ever bother you how the doors aren’t actually golden?”
He swiveled in his chair and smiled up at me, a bright, beatific smile. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“The poem doesn’t even end with golden doors, actually. It’s ‘I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’”
“So everything’s wrong.”
“Pretty much.”
“We tried painting the doors once,” a boy across the table said. A cousin, maybe. “It didn’t go over well.”
“They used my nail polish,” a girl said. “I told them it was a stupid idea.”
“The nail polish was gold sparkles,” Noah said. “They thought it would be subtle.”
“It was not,” the girl said.
Everyone smiled at me and I smiled back, then gestured to the seat next to Noah. “Okay if I sit here?”
“I saved it for you, so yes.” He turned to the others. “This is Abby.”
“Abby.” The boy on Noah’s other side leaned forward. He wore heavy eyeliner and had green hair and a few years on us. “The famous Abby.”
“Famous?” I glanced warily at Noah as I sat. “Should I be alarmed?”
“Shouldwe?” the green-haired boy said. “I hear you’re a blackmailer.”
I kicked Noah under the table.
“Ow,” Noah said calmly. “This is Jeremiah. Our moms were roommates in grad school.”
“Always a pleasure to meet a fellow delinquent.” Jeremiah shook my hand, then turned to Noah. “The parental rumor mill says it’s Harvard.”
Noah nodded.
“Sorry you couldn’t get into Yale.”
“Screw you,” Noah said with a laugh.
I’d never seen Noah so relaxed before, and it thrilled me to be allowed into his private circle. I couldn’t stop smiling. Ilikedthese people. They listened and laughed when they talked. They were smart and funny and attentive. I wanted to belong to them. I wanted this to be my place.
“All right, everyone!” Noah’s mother called from the adults table. “Ready?”
Everyone quieted down. At our table, Noah’s cousin Shira appeared and picked up the matches. As the sun started to set, we lit the candles and sang the prayers, and the sense of belonging settled deeper into my bones.Baruch atah Adonai,we said.Eloheinu Melekh ha’olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav, v’tzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Shabbat.This was belonging, to me, words I’d said since before I could understand them, candles lit, wine poured, challah ripped.
But no matter how familiar it was, no matter what sense of familiarity cloaked the evening, I was still an interloper at Golden Doors. I kept glancing at Noah’s parents and grandparents, and more than once found their attention on me: wary, puzzled, cautious. Worse, though, was the way Edward and Helendidn’tlook at each other, but instead stiffly focused on anyone else. How could I talk to them if they were still so tense?
I tried to focus instead on the people in front of me, laughing and teasing and being teased in return. I ate couscous with tender carrots and zucchini and peppers and a dozen spices; stuffed artichokes in lemon sauce; baklava from Jane’s bakery. When my leg brushed Noah’s, I didn’t move it, and he didn’t move his, either. I spent the meal riding high on the light touch of skin against skin.
Like my own parents, Noah’s adults were liberal about underage drinking on Shabbat. At home, I stuck to grape juice, but Nantucket had apparently done a number on me, so as the evening waned, I nursed a glass of wine. Only when the candles faded into smoke and the cousins cleared the tables and people milled about on the lawn did I lean in toward Noah. “Your grandparents haven’t looked at each other all evening.”
