The next morning I was dead on my feet, and right after a six a.m. feeding (Little Jacob promptly fell asleep), I went straight back to bed, an act that is just as much a sin in my culture as the aforementioned polygamy.

Just once before I die I would like to spend an entire day lolly-gagging about on the sofa eating chocolate bonbons. I might even watch a television show. I’ve heard that Oprah and The View are both worth seeing, but since I’ll have only this one day in which to commit the second-worst sin, that of sloth, I should probably do some consulting first. Maybe even look at a few clips from the shows before I decide. You can be sure, however, that I will not be watching Ellen, as I’m already in enough trouble with the Good Lord without adding dancing, the worst of all sins, to my litany.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, after a couple of hours I woke up, groggy and grainy eyed, because the little one was crying to be changed.

“Gabe,” I called sweetly.

After I’d added several decibels and tone changes, my dearly beloved finally appeared in the bedroom door. “Hon, can you make this quick? The Yankees are playing the Red Sox.”

I glanced at the bedside clock. “It’s only ten in the morning.”

“Yeah, I know, but since you don’t allow TVs in the house, I’m watching it on my cell phone from a disk I downloaded. The game was actually yesterday.”

“That’s nice, dear. Your son-that’s the infant in the crib next to me-needs changing today. Would you be a darling and do it this time?”

“Poopy or pee?”

Poopy? Gabriel Rosen is a medical doctor, for crying out loud. A cardiologist and well-known surgeon.

“Number two, I think. Does it matter?”

“Ah, hon, you know I can’t handle the stink of really messy diapers; it’s just not in me.”

“This is your son,” I growled, “the fruit of your loins, flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood, and poop of your poop. So put on your big-boy pants and deal with it.” I smiled sweetly to soften my words.

Without another word, Gabe picked up his son, but he held him at arm’s length during the entire changing process. “There, you happy now?” he said when he was done.

I didn’t know if he was speaking to me or Little Jacob, so I murmured soft obscenities. “Ding, dang, dong, ding.”

“What was that, Magdalena?”

To be truthful, my response would have been a lie. Fortunately, I was stopped by the presence of a nun standing in my bedroom door.

“Susannah?” I asked through my veil of grogginess.

“I’m Mother Dispirited, remember?”

I pulled myself to a sitting position. “Oh, right. And I’m Sister Disturbed; I’m disturbed that you’re still going through with this apathy thing.”

Susannah shrugged. “Really, Mags, you’re not supposed to care. Anyway, I’m here to say good-bye to my favorite nephew.”

“You have only one, dear.”

“He’s still my favorite. And Sister Disaster has come to say good-bye to her son.”

“What? But there aren’t any men here.”

“Thanks,” Gabe said drily as he handed Little Jacob to his sister-in-law.

Susannah, who adores her nephew almost as much as she does the loathsome cur that nestles in her Maidenform, took my baby with the utmost delight. It would embarrass me to no end to repeat the gaga-doo-doo baby talk she inflicted on the boy when she wasn’t attempting to smother him to death with kisses. Meanwhile, my question went unanswered.

“Can I take him out to show him to the sisters?” she finally asked.

“Yes, but you have to promise first that you won’t kidnap him and turn him into a monk-or a monkette-or whatever the word is for a tiny male person of your unorthodox persuasion.”

“How about monkey?” Susannah said, and then skipped off giggling with my life’s one achievement in her arms.

It was only when Susannah was gone that Gabe and I noticed the very stout nun standing just inside our bedroom door, to the left and in front of the closet. This sister was so short, and had such an enormous chest, that her habit made her body look square. As for her face-let me say with all Christian charity that with her hair pulled back and tucked under her wimple, she might well have passed for a geriatric gorilla. A lemon-sucking geriatric gorilla.

So alarmed was I that I leaped from the bed and into Gabe’s arms. “These are private quarters,” I eventually managed to gasp. Gabe, of course, had said nothing.

23

“Nu? So I come to say good-bye to my son. Do you mind?”

I did a double take. Then a triple.

“Ida? Is that you?”

“Don’t be silly, hon,” my darling said. “This woman’s a nun.”

“My name is Sister Disaster,” the homely woman in the religious garb said.

“Ida,” I said, “it is you, and you can’t be a nun, because you’re Jewish!”

“Ma?” I’d told Gabe the night before about Susannah and the Sisters of Perpetual Apathy, but he’d been pretty uninterested in the whole thing. “Sounds just like your sister,” he’d said. Apparently now that the wimple was on a different head, it was another story.

“I think we need to talk,” I said calmly. “Gabe, dear, hoist her up on the bed, so we can at least be eye to collarbone with her.”

Although he doesn’t think well under duress, the Babester can sometimes take direction. Thank heaven he did now. With Ida jammed between the two of us, and three feet off the ground (mine is the SUV of king-size beds), I felt that we had at least some control in what was otherwise a totally insane situation.

“Now, dear,” I began, “you do realize that Susannah-aka Mother Dispirited-is wearing a cross around her neck. I know, it’s just a soap cross, and if she showers with it on, it won’t be long before it’s not a cross at all. But my point is that this mother and sisters gig is a Christian, not a Jewish, thing.”

“Oy gevalt!” Gabe said suddenly and clapped both hands to his head. “Ma, you didn’t convert, did you?”

At that Ida tugged on a cheap chain that disappeared down the neckline of her habit and retrieved a startlingly large wooden star of David. “Dis vas supposed to be on de outside, ya? But I dress in a hurry.”

“So you’re still Jewish?” I said.

“Ya, und I see dat you are still meshugah. Of course I didn’t convert. De Sisters of Apathy dun’t care about your religion; all dey care about is dat you shouldn’t care anymore. Give up, und give in. Dat is our message. Vee vill all lose in de end, so vhy vorry?”

“But, Ma, that’s fatalistic. That’s just giving up. And what is it that makes your life so darn hard that you feel like this?”

“Vhat you say? Look around you, Gabeleh. Vhere are vee? In de shticks, dat’s vhere. Und I am living alone in a big house all de vay across de road. Vhat kind of life is dis, I ask you?”

“What kind of life do you want, Ma?”

“She wants to be living with you in New York City,” I said. “She wants to play mahjong every afternoon and talk about her son the doctor. Oh yes, and she’d like to keep Little Jacob with her and leave me behind.”

Sister Disaster wasn’t so apathetic that she could restrain from punching my ribs with her elbow. “I vould only play mahjong five days a veek!”

“Sorry, hon,” Gabe said, reaching around her to pat my back. “I thought that in time she’d learn to love you as much as I do.”

“Sometimes I think she does,” I said.

The Babester didn’t have the courtesy to respond to that. “Ma, why do you call yourself Sister Disaster? That’s such an awful name.”

“Because I am a disaster, yah? First, I vas unable to make you happy in New York. If I had been, vee vouldn’t be here. Dat is a fact. Und now, I am not able to fit into dis litle family dat you have made.”

“Ma, that’s simply not true; you fit in just fine. Alison utterly adores you. Even Freni has learned to tolerate you.”