“What’d you guys talk about? What’d he say?”
The hero worship for her father that so characterized her as a child is still in her eyes. I see that hunger for every detail of a loved one you didn’t get nearly enough time with at the end. That was how I felt when my grandmother died, asking my mom dozens of questions she didn’t want to answer, pouring over photo albums so I could see my bubbe at each stage of her life. Every detail was precious and made me feel closer to her.
“He said exactly what I needed to hear,” I tell her because it’s true. “I wasn’t sure I should start the school—wasn’t sure where to start, but he probed to figure out the things I was most passionate about.” I laugh, the details of that fateful meeting coming back to me with a rush of fondness and respect for the man who was such a huge part of my life when I was a kid, and who was so notably absent after the night of the dance.
“He used to say your mission starts with people.” Kimba brushes the gold ring on her thumb. “And your passions should fit on a napkin.”
“Yup. He asked me about the kinds of students I wanted to help, and he jotted it down on a napkin while I talked.”
“What’d you say?” she asks, her stare a welcome weight on my face. “What’d he write?”
I don’t answer, but reach into my back pocket, pull out my wallet and extract the folded square I rarely take out, handling it like it’s antique and fragile and worth preserving. When I spread it open on the table, she gasps, a smile blossoming on her mouth and her eyes shining with sudden unshed tears.
“It’s been so long since I’ve seen his handwriting.” She traces the loops and curves of the brusquely written words with one finger. The ink is faded, but the words are still legible.
Poor. Underserved. At risk. Bright. Ambitious. Capable. Hardworking.
And that’s my kids. Those are the people, the families YLA is reaching, is helping. Even though I rarely take this little slip of vision out, it has guided me the last few years.
“What was on your napkin?” I ask, unable to look anywhere but at the woman seated in front of me. I was bowled over by her beauty when I saw her on television, even at the funeral and at the event the other night, but she was a symbol—almost untouchable. This woman, right now, at my table, sitting so close I can’t escape her scent, impresses me with her heart. She’s tough and smart and takes no shit. You only have to spend a few minutes with her to know that. But she’s also real and soft and warm. I touched her with my hands, and as she discreetly swipes a tear from the corner of her eye, I see I’ve touched her heart.
“Um, let’s see.” She clears her throat, slants a smiling glance at me from beneath long lashes. “What did I write on my napkin? Disenfranchised. Marginalized. Forgotten. Left behind.”
“And your mission?”
“To put leaders in power who care about the people I do; who’ll work hard as hell to make life better for them. I could have done it a h
undred other ways, but when I worked on my first campaign, politics chose me.”
“It’s a tough game.”
“I’m a tough girl.” She drains her glass of water. “Ask all the people who call me a bitch. They’ll tell you.”
“I see more than that.”
“Maybe you see what you want to see.”
“I want to see you.”
The thread of awareness that has been slowly tugging me closer to her pulls taut. She looks up, her eyes widening and then narrowing at my words. I want to answer the questions in her eyes. She knows when someone is attracted to her. She knows about Aiko, about my family. Her unasked question hangs in the air between us. I want to reassure her that I’m no player and explain something to her I haven’t even told Noah or Mona yet.
“So your napkin tells me what you’re doing now,” she says. “What have you been up to the last twenty years or so?” Her dark eyes soften. “After that night, where’d you go, Ezra Stern?”
“Jewish camp.”
“I know that,” she laughs. “And then? Like…everything kind of disintegrated. A few weeks after you and your mom left for New York, your dad left, too. Next thing I know, there’s a For Sale sign in your front yard. You guys disappeared.”
“I went to camp as planned for a few weeks, and then we moved to Italy.”
“Italy? I didn’t expect you to say that.”
“I didn’t expect it either. Dad got that job he’d been wanting, but it took us overseas.”
“How was that?”
“It was hard at first. I missed…”
You.