Dreidels on the Brain (15 page)

I froze, suddenly realizing how idiotic I looked. What had I been doing?

Mister Mystery stopped the music. “Well,” he finally said, “that was . . . um . . .” It's the only time I've ever seen him at a loss for words. Finally he said, “That was really something.”

His intercom buzzed, meaning the next student had arrived. Without saying a word, I repacked the ABC blocks. Amy returned his hat, which he took with a little nod. Then we left, in silence.

Amy's mother was in the car waiting for us, and we climbed into the backseat, me with my suitcase on my lap. I scooted away from Amy and looked out the window.

“Hello, Joel,” said Mrs. O'Shea. “Good to see you.”

“Yes, Mrs. O'Shea. It's good to see you too.” I sounded like a zombie. I could feel my embarrassment spilling out and filling the car.

“How was the magic lesson?” asked Mrs. O'Shea.

“Oh, fine,” said Amy.

Neither of us said another word, all the way to my house. It was just a ten-minute drive, but it felt much, much longer. The whole time, I kept wishing I was on the bus.

As soon as I got home I knocked on Kenny's door, then Howard's, and asked if Mom had called. They both said no. Just then, the phone rang.

“I'll get it,” said Howard. “In case it's bad news.”

By the time he got it, the Phone-O-Matic had already lifted up the receiver and started playing its recording.

Hello dere! How you doin'?

“Turn off the machine!” Kenny said.

“Hello? Hello?” I could hear my mom's voice. “Who is this?”

This is Bob talking, but I'm not really here.

“Who is this?” said my mom again.

“It's Howard!” he shouted into the receiver. “We're unhooking the Phone-O-Matic!” My mom's hearing is especially bad on the phone. “Hold on a moment!” he said loudly.

“Can you hear me?” my mom shouted back.

Kenny finally turned off the machine, and Howard managed to pry the receiver out of the holder and put it up to his ear.

“This is Howard,” he said loudly. There was a pause. “My day was fine. Is the operation over? How is Dad?”

There was a long pause. And then a longer pause. Howard kept saying “Uh-huh.”

“What's happening?” Kenny whispered. “Did the operation work?”

Howard shushed him and went on with the uh-huhs. There must have been about ten of them, then Howard said, “But don't the doctors . . .” and then “When?” and a bunch more uh-huhs. It was driving Kenny and me crazy.

“Just tell us how Dad is!” I whispered, and Howard shushed me.

“Oh, hello, operator,” he finally said. “I see. Well, then, good-bye.”

Then he hung up.

“What did Mom say?” Kenny asked. “How did the operation go? Is he all right?”

“No,” said Howard. “They didn't do the operation.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“They couldn't. Because Dad had a bad reaction to a medication.”

“What medication?” asked Kenny. “What are you talking about?”

“It's called prednisone.”

“But he stopped taking it over a week ago!” I said. “He had me put it on the top shelf in the bathroom so he wouldn't take it by mistake!”

“Yes, that's true,” Howard said. “But that wasn't good, because he's been taking it for so long. His body had a reaction to him stopping, so they couldn't do the operation.”

“So he's coming back home?” I asked.

“No, he's not,” said Howard. “Without that medicine, his body shut down.”

“Shut down?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“His body went into shock. Like he's asleep, but they can't wake him up.”

“They can't wake him up?” asked Kenny, starting to cry. “Is he in a coma?”

“Yes,” said Howard. “But Mom said the doctors told her
not to use that word because that makes it sound bad. They think he'll wake up later.”

“When?”

“They don't know. Then the operator came on the phone and asked her to put in fifteen cents and she didn't have any change, so she had to get off. But she said she'll call us later. And that we should eat the TV dinners in the freezer.”

“But he'll be fine, right?” said Kenny. “I mean, this is temporary, isn't it?”

“Not exactly,” Howard said. “The doctor said he'll ‘probably' wake up. That means he might not.” Howard let this sink in. “Comas aren't good. He might die.”

I did not want to hear that, and started to cry too. I thought about how mean I'd been this morning with the Neck-O-Matic.

“But don't worry,” Howard said. “He probably won't.”

We stared at the phone, waiting for it to ring, but it didn't. So we stared at the Phone-O-Matic, but it didn't do anything either.

“I know!” said Kenny. “Let's listen to Dad's voice on the Phone-O-Matic!”

We all agreed that that was a good idea, so Kenny set it up. I went to the next room to dial it from the other line. It rang a couple times and then there was a loud click. Soon I heard my dad's voice.

“Hello dere! How you doin'? This is Bob talking, but I'm not really here. But don't hang up, because you're talking to me through the magic of my new invention, the Phone-O-Matic—patent pending! It's hooked up to two tape recorders, one you're hearing right now with my voice and the other I'll listen to when I get home. Now it's your turn to talk—go ahead and try it—and don't . . . be . . . frightened!”

There was a loud click as one tape recorder turned off, and then another as the second recorder turned on. It seemed like I should say something, so I said, “Hi, Dad. This is Joel. We just wanted to hear your voice. Bye.”

I went back to the kitchen. “Maybe we should light the candles,” Kenny said. Howard and I nodded in agreement. “And let's put the TV dinners in the oven, like Mom said.” We agreed with that too. “And then, as long as we're having TV dinners, we should watch TV, while we wait for her to call. It's Wednesday—
Star Trek
is on.”

“No,” said Howard. “We shouldn't watch TV. We should pray.”

“Let's pray first, then watch TV,” said Kenny.

“No,” said Howard. “We should just pray.”

They turned to me to cast the deciding vote. I didn't know what to say. The idea of the three of us praying together was weird. Then again, it seemed that not praying might make God even madder. I'd been thinking all day about the little
prayer I'd uttered last night asking God not to let my dad come to the assembly. He certainly wouldn't, if he was in a coma. Or dead. I didn't want my prayers to kill my dad, the way Eric Weiss's prayers may have killed Rabbi Buxelbaum. We had to do something.

“How about this,” I finally said. “Let's light the candles—and say
those
prayers—then watch TV.” That seemed the safest way to go, since
Star Trek
is, believe it or not, a Jewish show. Even though Gene Roddenberry isn't Jewish, the two other writers are. And the actors are Jewish. Captain Kirk—Jewish. Chekov—Jewish. And Mr. Spock—especially Jewish. You can tell because when he holds his fingers in the Vulcan greeting, he's actually making a secret Jewish symbol, called the sign of the Kohanim, the priestly class of Jews who descended from Moses's brother Aaron. It's the letter Shin—same as on the dreidel. Except on the dreidel it's bad, but here it's good, because it stands for one of the eighteen names of God. Yep, God has eighteen names, but they're actually nicknames, because God's
real
name is top secret, and no one can pronounce it, but if you
could,
you would have magical powers. When Leonard Nimoy—who plays Mr. Spock—was a kid in temple one day, the rabbi did the blessing of the Kohanim, which comes at the end of the service. Everyone is supposed to look down, but he looked up—and saw the rabbi holding his hands that way. It stuck
with him, and he thought to himself, If I ever play a Vulcan on TV, I'll make that my special sign!

So watching
Star Trek
seemed to be as good as praying, or maybe better, because praying doesn't seem to work, at least when I do it.

“All right,” said Howard—who also likes
Star Trek,
and kind of looks like Mr. Spock. “That's what we'll do. We'll light the candles, then pray, then eat our TV dinners while we watch
Star Trek
.”

We put our TV dinners in the oven—I got turkey, my favorite, with the foil you fold back while it cooks so the apple-cranberry cobbler gets browned. Then we set up the menorah, lit the candles, and said the blessings. Howard got out the prayer book from his bar mitzvah and announced there was a prayer for healing, which he read aloud. Kenny and I said, “Amen,” but Howard wouldn't leave it there. He looked up and said, “God, you should wake up our father. So he doesn't die.”

That added-on part didn't seem like much of a prayer to me. For one thing, I know that whenever Howard tells me to do something—even if it's something I already want to do—it makes me feel like doing the exact opposite. But Kenny and I said “Amen” again and nodded in agreement, then we took our TV dinners out of the oven and sat down to watch
Star Trek
. I was hoping it would take my mind
off my dad, and it did—for a while. It was a great episode: Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock travel back through time so they can change history to prevent The War. As I watched it, I kept thinking that I wanted to travel back in time—to last night, in my parents' room—and say, “Dad! Take these pills! Otherwise you'll go to sleep and maybe not wake up!”

Even the
Star Trek
episode backfired, because they only succeeded in
delaying
The War, so the Nazis developed their own atomic bomb and won! It was horrible. They were trying to figure out how to fix it when the phone rang. We all ran to get it, but Kenny got there first, picked it up, then kept saying, “Uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . uh-huh. I see.”

When he finally hung up he said, “Dad's still asleep. They hope he'll wake up tomorrow. Mom's staying at the hospital tonight. She'll call in the middle of the night if he wakes up.”

We sat thinking about that a while, then went back to watching TV, but by then,
Star Trek
was over. We never did find out how Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock stopped the Nazis, and finally, Kenny and Howard went to bed.

When I got to my room, I reached under my bed, where I have a shoe box with all my impromptu magic tricks, which are the ones you can do at a moment's notice. I sifted through and found my lucky deck of cards, the ones with the blue
backs. Herrmann was up too, running on her wheel, so I sat next to her cage, took out the jokers, and shuffled the cards.

These are regular cards—not marked in any way. I stared at the back of the first card. “Red,” I finally said, then put it to one side. The next card: “Also red,” and put it on top of the first. Then the next: “Black,” and started another pile.

This isn't a magic trick—though there is one that looks just like it, called Out of This World, where you choose a volunteer and they guess the color on the face of each card without looking. One by one, they go through the whole deck and, lo and behold, get every single one right. They're shocked, convinced they have psychic powers. I saw Doug Henning, this hippie magician with long hair who dresses in rainbow clothes, do it on
The Merv Griffin Show
.

But this isn't that. This is about real magic. I have tried this again and again over the past couple of months, counting each time to see how many I got right, then writing down the number on the inside of the top of the shoe box. By the simple law of averages, I should get about half the cards right. The more I do it, the closer I should get to the average of twenty-six. But here's the thing: My average is
twenty-nine and a half
. And one time I actually got thirty-eight right—my record. There's no explanation for this besides magic. And if I can believe in magic, I can believe in God.