The Wonder Spot (3 page)

I knew that eventually I would have to say I was sorry, even if I didn't know why I should be and wasn't. Until I said it, my mother would go on talking and get angrier until she became tired and hurt, at which point my father would take over.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

My mother kissed me. “I know you are.”

It felt a little less crowded up front then. My mother said what a wonderful job Rebecca had done and then, almost to herself, said she hadn't even started to plan my bat mitzvah.

I looked at my mother. I looked at my dad. It had all been decided. I couldn't argue; I was supposed to be remorseful.

At a gas station, I climbed into the way back with Albert, where I closed my eyes and thought about Danny. I didn't remember being queasy or afraid. I remembered him taking my hand. I thought of him saying, “I can't believe summer's over,” which I heard now as a declaration of love.

. . . . .

I came home from my first day of getting lost at Flynn Junior High to the news that I had been enrolled in the Hebrew class required of the bat-mitzvah bound. My mother was relieved; she'd been afraid we were too late, but there was room for me after all.

The topic that night at dinner was varsity football. Jack wanted to join the team. We were all surprised. He took photographs and painted pictures; he wrote stories and acted in plays; he'd played soccer, but only intramurally.

My parents objected—he would be too busy applying to college, they said—but Jack argued with reason and passion. For example, he said that joining the football team would demonstrate that he was well-rounded, etc., and might even strengthen his applications.

My father seemed glad to give in, and I thought now might be the right time to discuss the bat mitzvah I did not want to have. But his good mood shone down on Robert; my father suggested they hit at the public courts after dinner.

Robert got so excited that he jumped up from the table to change and was on the stairs when my mother said, “Robert?”

He stopped. “May I please be excused?”

My mother said, “Yes,” and took this opportunity to ask me to get their cigarettes. She didn't like to ask in front of Robert, who regularly talked to my parents about their imminent smoking-related deaths.

They were supposedly limiting themselves to three cigarettes a day, the best and last of which they smoked together after dinner, with their coffee. They'd switched to Carlton 100s so they'd enjoy smoking less. And they kept them in the basement; the inconvenience was supposed to make them more aware of each cigarette, but I didn't see how, since the inconvenience was all mine.

I thought of this tonight and every night I went down the basement stairs and into what we still called the playroom even though we never played anything in there anymore except the rare game of PingPong. The net was still up, but the table's identity was otherwise concealed beneath the junk that overwhelmed the rest of the playroom.

The cigarettes were stored in the refrigerator of my cardboard kitchen, and to get there I had to step over Jack's barbells and around boxes and books crowned with such unstackable items as an old telephone with its cord cut. Only my kitchen was left uncluttered and intact, which made me wonder if my mother hoped that one day I'd go back to whipping up imaginary cakes and pies for her and my father.

Upstairs, everyone was out on the porch, my parents on a chaise apiece and my brothers in the love seat, leaving an armless chair for me. None of the porch furniture was comfortable, though; it was
metal, and when we stood up its diamond pattern was imprinted on the backs of our thighs like fishnet stockings.

Robert had changed into whites, but the excitement he'd had about playing tennis was gone; he sat silent and grim, all of his attention on the two cigarettes I'd put on the table between my parents.

When my father reached for his, Robert closed his eyes and said, “I can't watch this.” His voice was matter-of-fact, as it always was, even when he discussed his future as an orphan.

My mother said a sympathetic, “Would you like to be excused?”

He nodded and rose, leaving his chocolate pudding behind in protest, and Albert followed him inside.

My father lit my mother's cigarette and then his. As though in reverie, he held the burned match a moment before putting it in the clamshell that served as an ashtray. I watched him take another puff, and then I began. I said, “I've decided not to have a bat mitzvah.”

My father turned to look at me, one hand behind his head in a futile attempt at comfort. He was used to people pleading their cases before him, and he waited for me to plead mine.

Jack seemed amused, so I tried to pretend he wasn't there. He'd become a less reliable ally over the summer, when he'd begun to see himself less as a camper than a counselor, less the oldest child than the youngest parent.

My mother glanced from me to my father. I'd been fighting with her lately as I never had before—twice that week I'd sent her down to the cardboard refrigerator—and though she'd told my father, he had yet to witness this behavior himself. It occurred to me that she hoped he would now.

I kept my voice calm. “The only reason I'd do it would be for material gain.” With a pang, I thought of the stereo my parents had given Jack for his bar mitzvah. “In conclusion,” I said, “this seems wrong.”

My father nodded for me to go on.

I thought,
Did you not hear my “in conclusion”?
But I nodded myself, as though deciding which of my many powerful points to voice next. “I don't know what I believe in,” I said. “So I don't think I should go up on a stage and act like I do.”

Robert's voice came from behind the screen door: Softly, less to us than himself, he said,
“Beema.”
He knew the correct term for the stage in a synagogue because, unlike Jack and me, Robert had gone to Hebrew school since kindergarten. He loved it. The only reason he wasn't going this year was that he'd been chosen to tutor fifth-graders less brilliant than himself.

We all turned to look at him, a small figure in white.

He said, “Do you know what cilia are?”

My father sighed. “We're having a conversation here, honey.”

Robert had written to the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association for help, and often quoted from the brochures they'd sent. “Cilia are little hairs that keep your lungs clean,” he said now. “When you smoke, you paralyze them.”

My mother said, “Why don't you come out and finish your pudding?”

“Did you hear what I said?” Robert asked.

“We heard, honey,” my father said and turned back to me, my cue to continue. I thought of saying,
Having a bat mitzvah represents everything I stand against.
But I knew my father would say,
For instance?
and I hadn't prepared examples. I was working up the courage to say,
My decision is final,
when my mother spoke.

If she'd wanted my father to witness my defiance a moment earlier, I could see that she didn't now. “You used to love Hebrew school,” she said.

I said, “That was in first grade.” It was true that I'd loved my teacher, Miss Bell, and songs like “Let My People Go,” and stories about jealousy; but it was also true that I'd been so little that when Miss Bell had talked about God as Our Father, I'd pictured mine.

The four of us were looking at my father now. All that was left was for him to deliver his verdict. I didn't know what he would say. He could surprise you, because he really was fair.

He said, “I'd like to talk to Sophie alone,” and Jack and my mother got up and followed Robert inside.

My father's cigarette was down to the filter now, and he took the last possible puff. In his face I saw that he was sorry about that; maybe
he was already thinking of all the hours that separated him from his next cigarette.

He said, “You seem to have made up your mind.”

I barely managed to say, “I've given it a lot of thought.”

“Have you?” he said. “It's a big decision to make on your own.”

I said, “I can understand that,” which didn't sound right, and I realized that I'd just repeated a phrase he often used during discussions.

He looked right at me and said, “Having a bat mitzvah is an important part of being Jewish.”

In his voice I heard the unexpected magnitude of my decision: It separated me not just from my mother but from him, too, and maybe even from my brothers. I thought of the story of Moses parting the Red Sea for the Jews, and I saw my family safe on the far shore, waving as I drowned with Pharaoh's soldiers in the unparting sea.

As though underwater, I could barely hear my father's words.

He said that a bat mitzvah was a rite of passage into adulthood. “I still remember mine. I didn't like studying for it,” he said. “No one does.”

I thought,
Robert will.

My father's voice sounded more normal when he said, “Your bat mitzvah wouldn't have to be like Rebecca's.”

He kept his eyes on me. “We won't make any plans until you say so,” he said. “But I'd like you to try Hebrew school.”

It was more of a request than a command, and I was lulled by his respectful tone. I said, “Okay.”

“Good,” he said.

Another moment passed before I realized that I'd agreed to go to Hebrew school.

My mother appeared at the screen door. “Would you like a piece of fruit or anything?”

“Yes,” he said. “I'd like a cushion for this goddamned chair.”

“Maybe next year,” she said. Then: “Robert's waiting.”

My father looked at me. He said, “Are we finished, sweetheart?” and I said that we were.

. . . . .

My mother gave me a lift to Hebrew school. She brought Albert along to make me feel better and said that she wouldn't mind a little music, meaning that I could tune the radio to a station I liked.

I said, “Thank you anyway.”

We drove in silence. The sun was still strong and the sky a summer blue, and I thought of the vacant lot and of Danny saying, “I can't believe summer's over.”

We turned up the long driveway. The synagogue was pretty if I covered my left eye and just saw the old mansion part, where the offices were, and not the ugly new addition—a submarinelike tunnel of classrooms plus the actual temple with its trapezoidal stained-glass windows.

At the entrance, my mother said, “You know, Aunt Nora and I weren't allowed to have bat mitzvahs. They were just for boys.”

I turned a blank eye to my mother, informing her that her words were irrelevant to me.

“Well,” she said, forcing a smile, “I'll pick you up at five-thirty.”

I said my most wretched, “Good-bye.”

After I closed the door, she said, “Sophie?” and for a second I thought that maybe she would say something comforting, or even,
I don't want you to suffer: Let's go.
Unlike my father, she was capable of reversals.

She said, “Did you want to thank me for the lift?”

. . . . .

The classroom was brand-new and modern, with petal-shaped desks, a skylight, and Hebrew letters in fluorescent colors tacked above the blackboard—probably an attempt to make us think that Hebrew was groovy. Instead, the room reminded me of the Muzak version of a rock song. I took the last seat in the last row so I could be closest to the door.

The teacher was writing on a pad and seemed oblivious to the dozen twelve- and thirteen-year-olds who faced him. I exchanged silent greetings with the ones I recognized from regular school, even Leslie Liebman, whose hands were folded on her desk.

The bell rang, and just when it was getting strange for the teacher not to start the class, he stood. He wrote his name on the board and faced us.

Very slowly, he said, “I am Moreh Pinkus.”

I'm sure we all thought that
moreh
was his first name and were surprised to hear him say it to us; it wasn't until the second class that we learned that
moreh
meant
teacher
in Hebrew.

He was probably in his early thirties but seemed much older, as the very religious sometimes do. He was almost bald, which made me wonder if he'd glued his yarmulke on. He seemed to shuffle because the trousers of his suit were too long. I would have thought he was Orthodox, but he didn't have long curls in front of his ears or the beard that I thought was required.

After introducing himself, Moreh Pinkus rummaged through his briefcase for what turned out to be the attendance sheet. He read it over, and even then hesitated before speaking; it occurred to me that he didn't trust or like his voice.

He called my name first: “Applebaum, Sophie?”

“Here,” I said.

He looked up at me for a long moment, so long I wondered if he'd divined how much I didn't want to be there. But he did the same with the next person and the next—calling the name, studying the face—until he said, “Muchnick, Margie?” and there was no answer.