A Stranger on the Planet

by Adam Schwartz

“We’ll only be five minutes,” Phyllis said impatiently. “Come, Alan.”

  She reached for me and my mother slapped her hand away. Phyllis looked at her hand as if it didn’t belong to her.

  “I’m his family,” my mother declared. “If the photographer wants a portrait, he can come over here.”

  “Crazy woman,” Phyllis murmured, and turned away.

  My mother caught Phyllis on the side of her head with her purse. Phyllis whirled around, crying, “Oh! Oh!” more in disbelief than in pain. My mother lunged. Each woman grabbed at the other’s hair and face. They teetered back and forth in their high heels. I could hear nylons whispering against nylons. My father rushed over, his hand raised and his black robes billowing. I ran out.

  I kept running until I reached the beach, breathless. Each gulp of the November air stung my lungs. I wrapped my tallis around my neck and walked rapidly through the sand. Then I heard my mother shout my name. I turned around. She was perhaps a hundred yards behind me, her shoes in her hands. She crossed them over her head, signaling me to stop. I walked down to the shoreline.

  I recalled how she and I used to come to this same beach on winter afternoons when my parents were still married. She liked the remoteness of the beach in winter. Once we came with a helium balloon she had bought me at a nearby amusement park. At the shoreline she had bent down beside me and we placed our fingertips all over its shiny red surface. “We’re sending a message,” she said, “to your Nana Rose.” I let go of the balloon and watched it sail up into the brilliant blue air and disappear high over the ocean. She explained that when the balloon reached heaven, Nana Rose would recognize our fingerprints. Perhaps I looked at her quizzically, because she then said, “Trust me, sweetie. We’re already on the moon.”

  I watched the waves explode and dash toward me, watched the froth top my shoes, and at almost the same moment felt my socks turn to ice.

  “Alan, dear, why are you standing in the water?”

  She was right behind me. I didn’t turn around or answer.

  “Honey, doll, you’ll ruin your shoes.”

  “Good.”

  “You’ll catch pneumonia.”

  “Even better.”

  “Won’t you at least step out of the water?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Maybe I want to go for a swim.”

  I really didn’t want to swim. I just wanted to lie down in the surf and close my eyes and drift, like a toy boat or a bottle, to the other side of the ocean, washing up on the shore of a country where nobody knew me.

  “Darling, it’s too cold to swim. Wait until the summer. Then you can go in the water.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that!”

  “Like what, sweetie?”

  “Like I’m crazy. Like I’m about to jump out a window. You’re the one who’s crazy, not me.”

  “Oh, Alan, don’t criticize. Not now. Not after what I’ve been through. Don’t be like all the others.”

  I turned around, ready to shout, “Why can’t you be like all the others?!” Then I saw how bad she looked. One eye was half closed and her nostrils were rimmed with blood. Angry red welts laced her windpipe. She dropped to her knees and began crying, her tears falling into the sand.

  I was only thirteen that day, but I knew my mother would never change. She would never have a beautiful office like Florence Fein’s. She would never have more than three or four patients, people like Mrs. Gutman, who were as chaotic and pained as she was. I knew she would always feel like a stranger on the planet.

  Two weeks later a judge sent me to live with my father. The fight with Phyllis and the depositions provided by nearly everyone in my father’s congregation weighed heavily against my mother. I was sullen with the judge, though he was kind to me. Perhaps I could have said something nice about my mother, but I was only thirteen and didn’t know that love can be as obdurate as the changes you long for. Perhaps I could have told him that after I turned around and saw her bruised face, I lifted my mother to her feet. I pressed my tallis against her bloody nose. Then I rolled it up into a tight little ball, and we trekked back up the beach together.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Michele McDonald and Eileen Pollack read every draft of this book, always providing me with crucial advice, encouragement, and support. I owe them my deepest thanks. I’d also like to thank Katie Herman, my editor at Soho Press, for her brilliant editorial guidance, and Jim McPherson, my teacher and friend, for teaching me that imagination is the medium through which we invent our best selves.