What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories (2 page)

Deb looks crestfallen. She was expecting something empowering. Some story with which to educate Trevor, to reconfirm her belief in the humanity that, from inhumanity, forms. So now she’s just staring, her mouth hanging on to this thin, watery smile.

But me, I love that kind of story. I’m starting to take a real shine to both these two, and not just because I’m suddenly feeling sloshed.

“Good story, Yuri,” I say, copying his wife. “Yerucham,” I say, “that one’s got zing.”

Yerucham hoists himself up from the table, looking proud. He checks the label of our white bread on the counter—making sure it’s kosher. He takes a slice, pulls off the crust, and rolls the white part against the countertop with the palm of his hand. He rolls it up into a little ball. He comes over and pours himself a shot and throws it back. And then he eats that crazy dough ball. Just tosses it in his mouth, as if it’s the bottom of his own personal punctuation mark—you know, to underline his story.

“Is that good?” I say.

“Try it,” he says. He goes to the counter and slings me, through the air, he pitches me a slice of white bread, and says, “But first pour yourself a shot.”

I reach for the bottle and find that Deb’s got her hands around it, and her head’s bowed down, like the bottle is anchoring her, keeping her from tipping back.

“Are you okay, Deb?” Lauren says. She’s got a hand on Deb’s neck, and then switches to rubbing her arm. And I know what it is. I know what it is and I just up and say it: “It’s because it was funny.”

“Honey!” Deb says.

“She won’t tell you, but she’s a little obsessed with the Holocaust. And that story, no offense, Mark, it’s not what she had in mind.”

Mark is staring back and forth between us. And, honestly, the guy looks hurt. And I should leave it be, I know. But I just have to go on. It’s not like someone from Deb’s high school is around every day offering insights.

“It’s like she’s a survivor’s kid, my wife. It’s crazy, that education they give them. Her grandparents were all born in the Bronx, but it’s like, I don’t know. It’s like here we are twenty minutes from downtown Miami, but really it’s 1937 and we live on the edge of Berlin. It’s astounding.”

“That’s not it!” Deb says, openly defensive, her voice just super high up on the register. “I’m not upset about that. It’s just the alcohol. All this alcohol,” she says, and rolls her eyes, making light. “It’s that and seeing Lauren. Seeing Shoshana, after all this time.”

“Oh, she was always like this in high school,” Shoshana says. “Sneak one drink, and she started to cry.”

“Alcohol is a known depressive,” Yerucham says. And for that, for stating facts like that, he’s straight on his way to being disliked again.

“You want to know what used to get her going, what would make her truly happy?” Shoshana says. And I tell you, I don’t see it coming. I’m as blindsided as Deb was with that numbers story.

“It was getting high,” Shoshana says. “That’s what always did it. Smoking up, it would just make her laugh for hours and hours.”

“Oh my God,” Deb says, but not to Shoshana. She’s pointing at me, likely because I look as startled as I feel. “Look at my big bad secular husband,” Deb says. “He really can’t handle it. He can’t handle his wife’s having any history of naughtiness at all—Mr. Liberal Open-Minded.” And to me, she says, “How much more chaste a wife can you dream of than a modern-day Yeshiva girl who stayed a virgin until twenty-one? Honestly,” she says, “what did you think Shoshana was going to say was so much fun?”

“Honestly-honestly?” I say. “I don’t want to. It’s embarrassing.”

“Let’s hear,” Mark says. “We’re all friends here. New friends, but friends.”

“I thought you were—,” I say, and I stop. “You’ll kill me.”

“Say it!” Deb says, positively glowing.

“Honestly, I thought you were going to say it was something like competing in the Passover Nut Roll, or making sponge cake. Something like that.” I hang my head. And Shoshana and Deb are just laughing so hard, they can’t breathe. They’re grabbing at each other, so that I can’t tell, really, if they’re holding each other up or pulling each other down. I’m afraid one of them’s going to fall.

“I can’t believe you told him about the nut roll,” Shoshana says.

“And I can’t believe,” Deb says, “you just told my husband of twenty-two years how much we used to get high. I haven’t
touched a joint since before we were married,” she says. “Have we, honey? Have we smoked since we got married?”

“No,” I say. “It’s been a very long time.”

“So, come on, Shosh. When was it? When was the last time you smoked?”

Now, I know I mentioned the beard on Mark. But I don’t know if I mentioned how hairy a guy he is. It grows, that thing, right up to his eyeballs. Like having eyebrows on top and bottom both. It’s really something. So when Deb asks the question, the two of them, Shosh and Yuri, they’re basically giggling like children, and I can tell, in the little part that shows, in the bit of skin I can see, that Mark’s eyelids and earlobes are in full blush.

“When Shoshana said we drink to get through the days,” Mark says, “she was kidding about the drinking.”

“We don’t drink much,” Shoshana says.

“It’s smoking that she means,” he says.

“We smoke,” Lauren says, reconfirming.

“Cigarettes?” Deb says.

“We still get high,” Shoshana says. “I mean, all the time.”

“Hassidim!” Deb screams. “You’re not allowed! There’s no way.”

“Everyone does in Israel. It’s like the sixties there,” Mark says. “Like a revolution. It’s the highest country in the world. Worse than Holland, and India, and Thailand put together. Worse than anywhere, even Argentina—though they may have us tied.”

“Well, maybe that’s why the kids aren’t interested in alcohol.”

And Yerucham admits that maybe this is so.

“Do you want to get high now?” Deb says. And we all three look at her. Me, with surprise. And those two just with straight longing.

“We didn’t bring,” Shoshana says. “Though it’s pretty rare anyone at customs peeks under the wig.”

“Maybe you guys can find your way into the glaucoma underground over at Carmel Lake,” I say. “I’m sure that place is rife with it.”

“That’s funny,” Mark says.

“I’m funny,” I say, now that we’re all getting on.

“We’ve got pot,” Deb says.

“We do?” I say. “I don’t think we do.”

Deb looks at me and bites at the cuticle on her pinkie.

“You’re not secretly getting high all these years?” I say, feeling honestly like maybe I’m about to get a whole list of deceptions. I really don’t feel well at all.

“Our son,” Deb says. “He has pot.”

“Our son?”

“Trevor,” she says.

“Yes,” I say. “I know which one.”

· · ·

It’s a lot for one day, that kind of news. And it feels to me a lot like betrayal. Like my wife’s old secret and my son’s new secret are wound up together and that I’ve somehow been wronged. Also, I’m not one to recover quickly from any kind of slight from Deb—not when there are other people around. I really need to talk stuff out. Some time alone with Deb, even five minutes, would fix it. But it’s super-apparent that she doesn’t need any time alone with me. She doesn’t seem troubled at all. What she seems is focused. She’s busy at the counter, using a paper tampon wrapper to roll up a joint.

“It’s an emergency preparedness method we came up with in high school,” Shoshana says. “The things teenage girls will do when they’re desperate.”

“And we were desperate,” Deb says, as if everything’s already funny. “Do you remember that nice boy from Y.H.S.Q. that we used to smoke in front of?”

“I can picture him,” Shoshana says. “But not the name.”

“He’d just watch us,” Deb says. “There’d be six or seven of us in a circle, girls and boys not touching—we were so religious. Isn’t that crazy?” Deb is talking to me, as Shoshana and Mark don’t think it’s crazy at all. “The only place we touched was passing the joint, at the thumbs. And this boy, we had a nickname for him.”

“ ‘Passover’!” Shoshana yells.

“Yes,” Deb says, “that’s it. All we ever called him was ‘Passover.’ Because every time the joint got to him, he’d just pass it over to the next one. Passover Rand,” Deb says. “Now I remember.”

Shoshana takes the joint and lights it with a match, sucking in deep. “It’s a miracle when I remember anything these days,” she says. “I’m telling you. It’s the kids. After my first was born, I forgot half of everything I knew. And then half again with each one after. Ten kids later, it’s amazing when I remember to blow out a match after I light it.” She drops the one she’s holding into the sink, and it makes that little hiss. “Just last night, I woke up in a panic. I couldn’t remember if there were fifty-two cards in a deck or fifty-two weeks in a year. The recall errors—I’m up all night worrying over them, just waiting for the Alzheimer’s to kick in.”

“It’s not that bad,” Mark tells her. “It’s only everyone on one side of your family that has it.”

“That’s true,” she says, passing her husband the joint. “The other side is blessed only with dementia. Anyway, which is it? Weeks or cards?”

“Same, same,” Mark says, taking a hit.

When it’s Deb’s turn, she holds the joint and looks at me,
like I’m supposed to nod or give her permission in some husbandly anxiety-absolving way. And I just can’t take it anymore. Instead of saying, “Go ahead,” or “Let’s do it,” I pretty much bark at Deb. “When were you going to tell me about our son?” I say. “When was that going to happen? How long have you known?”

At that, Deb takes a long hit, and holds it deep, like an old pro.

“Really, Deb. How could you not tell me you knew?”

Deb walks over and hands me the joint. She blows the smoke in my face, not aggressive, just blowing.

“I’ve only known five days,” she says. “I was going to tell you, obviously. I just wasn’t sure how, or if I should talk to Trevy first, maybe give him a chance,” she says.

“A chance to what?” I ask.

“To let him keep it as a secret between us. To let him know he could have my trust, could be forgiven, if he promised to stop.”

“But he’s the son,” I say. “I’m the father. Even if it’s a secret with him, it should be a double secret between me and you. I should always get to know—but pretend not to know—any secret with him.”

“Do that double part again,” Mark says, trying to follow. But I ignore him.

“That’s how it goes,” I say to Deb. “That’s how it’s always been.” And because I’m desperate and unsure, I follow it up with “Hasn’t it?”

I mean, we really trust each other, Deb and I. And I can’t remember feeling like so much has hung on one question in a long, long time. I’m trying to read her face, and something really complex is going on, some formulation. And then she just sits right there on the floor at my feet.

“Oh my God,” she says. “I’m so fucking high. Like instantly.
Like, like,” and then she starts laughing. “Like, Mike,” she says. “Like, kike,” she says, turning completely serious. “Oh my God, I’m really messed up.”

“We should have warned you,” Shoshana says.

As she says this, I’m holding my first hit in, and already trying to fight off the paranoia that comes rushing behind that statement. Mark takes the joint back and passes it straight to Shoshana, respecting the order of things.

“Warn us what?” I say, my voice high, and the smoke still sweet in my nose.

“This isn’t your father’s marijuana,” he says. “The THC levels. It’s like, I don’t know, the stuff from our childhood? One hit of this new hydroponic stuff, it’s like if maybe you smoked a pound of the stuff we had when we were kids.”

“I feel it,” I say. And I do, in a deep, deep way. And I sit down with Deb on the floor and take her hands. I feel nice. Though I’m not sure if I thought that or said it, so I try it again, making sure it’s out loud. “I feel nice,” I say.

“I found it in the laundry hamper,” Deb says. “That’s where I got the pot.”

“In the hamper?” Shoshana says.

“Leave it to a teenage boy to think that’s the best place to hide something,” Deb says. “His clean clothes show up folded in his room, and it never occurs to him that someone empties the hamper. To him, it’s the loneliest, most forgotten space in the world. Point is,” Deb says, “I found an Altoids tin at the bottom, stuffed full. Just brimming with pot.” Deb gives my hands a squeeze. “Are we good now?”

“We’re good,” I say. And it feels like we’re a team again, like it’s us against them. Because when Shoshana passes Deb the joint, Deb says, “Are you sure you guys are allowed to smoke pot that comes out of a tin that held non-kosher candy? I really
don’t know if that’s okay.” And it’s just exactly the kind of thing I’m thinking right then.

“She’s on Facebook, too,” I say. “That can’t be allowed, either. These are very bad Hassidim,” I say, and we laugh at that. We laugh hard.

“First of all, we’re not eating it. We’re smoking it. And even so, it’s cold contact, so it’s probably all right either way,” Shoshana says.

“ ‘Cold contact?’ ” I say.

“It’s a thing,” Shoshana says. “Just forget about it and get up off the floor. Chop-chop.” And each of them offers us a hand and gets us standing. “Come, sit back at the table,” Shoshana says. So once we’re up, we’re back down again at the table.