We were more naked than we’d ever been, and our nakedness had a consciousness it had never had before. We didn’t have sex or even come close to having sex, but what we did was still farther than either of us had ever gone before. Farther into who we were. Farther into who we would be. When it was over, when we were lying next to each other, limbs overlapping, traffic sending its rhythm from floors below, I felt I was allowed to float above my own life, and what I found there was an astonishingly clear peace.
Moshe was right there with me. Until he stood up. Until he put his underwear back on, sat down on the bed, and began to cry.
I moved next to him. I put my arms around him, held him.
“Are you happy or sad?” I asked, because I really couldn’t tell.
“Both,” he said. “Both.”
We got tickets to three more Sunday matinees. We told our parents we were having dinner after, which was why we got back so late.
I took him to see Into the Woods, and he thanked me.
He took me to see Cats, and I forgave him.
We found out from talking that we’d both come to a certain awareness when we’d seen photos of Mark Spitz. But Moshe was careful to make the distinction: It wasn’t just because Spitz was sexy in a Speedo. It was his expression. He was a winner, and he was embracing that. We wanted to live like that, so damn sure of ourselves.
For our fourth date, I decided we had to see The Phantom of the Opera, since it had, in its own way, brought us together. I waited for him at a kosher deli, which was much better than the kosher pizza place. When he didn’t show, I assumed he was running late. I went to the theater, and as curtain time approached, I left his ticket for him at the box office.
Through the first act, I was much more anxious about him than I was about the falling chandelier. At intermission, I found a pay phone and called his house. The angry way his father asked “Who is this?” tipped me off that something was going on. I hung up; it didn’t sound like he was there.
I thought maybe he’d be waiting for me in front of the theater after the show was over. I thought maybe he’d meet me in the lobby of the Hotel Pennsylvania. I sat there for two hours, Goodbye, Columbus in my lap, unable to read or do anything else besides wait.
I took my scheduled train. When I got to the train station at home, both of my parents were waiting. As soon as they saw me, they said we needed to talk. I wondered if Moshe had called, had left a message. But it was actually his mother who’d called, asking if I knew where he was. She said he’d announced he was going to California. She didn’t believe him.
“Do you believe him?” my father asked.
I nodded. And then, to my profound horror, I began to cry.
I told my parents everything. Well, not everything. Not the details. But I told them I’d been dating Moshe. I did not tell them I’d fallen in love, but I’m sure they could hear it in my voice.
This is not the coming-out story I tell on first dates.
There were a couple of phone calls after, from pay phones in California. He apologized for standing me up and said the timing hadn’t been his choice. He told me we’d catch another matinee soon, whenever he returned to New York. The word love never came up, because it would only make it feel worse—at least for me. Had there been cell phones, texting, email, we probably would have kept in touch. But there wasn’t, so we didn’t. Our time together became a good dream, possibly the best dream. I never forgot it, but I remembered it less and less, as other dreams joined in.
I’ve written about him hundreds of times, and I haven’t written about him at all until now.
5.
I wish I’d had the experience, the wisdom then to tell him: To me, Jewish is knowing that you can’t be asked to have pride in one part of your identity and then be told to have shame about another part. Whoever asks you to do that is wrong. To be proud as a Jew is to be proud of everything you are. I wish I’d seen him crying and had known to say: To be loved by God is to be loved for who you are; to love God is to place no boundaries on who you love. I didn’t know this then. I do now. Whether or not I believe in the God of my ancestors, I see God in everyone.
To me, Jewish is holding on to the people you love. To me, Jewish is dancing and kissing and loving no matter who’s watching and what they might say. To me, Jewish is helping the world. To me, Jewish is helping each other. To me, Jewish is me and Moshe in that hotel room. It is who we were. It is who we’ve become.
AFTERSHOCKS
BY RACHEL LYNN SOLOMON
Friday, 5:08 p.m.
Just before sunset
Somehow, Miri had wound up dating the only other Jewish kid in eleventh grade.
She wanted to believe it was an accident. That all the time they spent on Quiz Bowl challenging and teasing each other, blushing when their hands brushed against the buzzer at the same time, his religion hadn’t once crossed her mind.
That would be a lie.
Miri liked that Aaron was Jewish, but it also occurred to her that he was Jewish, like, really Jewish, in a way she’d never been. He missed school during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. She not only attended school those days but ate the occasional BLT for lunch. He’d had a bar mitzvah, while she’d never even attended one. He told her once that his family had two sets of dishes, and while she nodded like she knew exactly what this meant, she in fact did not.
And as she stood on his front porch for the first time while trying to remember if she’d locked her car—she was eighty percent sure, but the twenty percent of doubt made an uneasiness settle into her stomach—his Jewishness felt like a massive, physical thing that separated them rather than connecting them.
She was relieved when he opened the door almost right away, his dark hair damp from a shower, his clean-boy smell intoxicating.
“You’re here,” he said, grinning like the simple fact of her presence had made his entire night, and it wasn’t even six o’clock.
“I’m not sure I locked my car,” she blurted instead of hello.
His brow furrowed. “It’s a pretty safe neighborhood, but—”
“Oh. Okay. Yeah.” What was a conversation, even?
Aaron stepped onto the porch, closing the door behind him. He looked cute and Quiz Bowl–championships professional in khakis and a navy button-up. His eyes were the clearest blue. Miri glanced down at the outfit her fourteen-year-old sister, Hannah, had helped her pick out: a striped dress, black tights, and a long black cardigan, plus the thrift-store necklace with a bird charm she wore most days. She’d pinned her wavy chin-length hair back on one side, and her anxious fingers twitched to fiddle with it.
“You look really nice,” Aaron said to the welcome mat, his cheeks turning red. The mat declared SHALOM in English and, beneath it, in Hebrew.
Miri felt her face get hot. “It’s a pretty attractive mat,” she said, which made Aaron laugh.
Their relationship was only five days old, and they hadn’t kissed yet. For the past month, they’d been “hanging out” on weekends and messaging each other all the things they were too shy to say in person. On Sunday night after a movie hangout—they never used the word “date”—during which their elbows and thighs had touched the entire time, Miri had finally broken down and decided to be bold. I think I like you, she texted once she got home. Three agonizing minutes later, during which Miri had contemplated setting her phone on fire, changing her name, and moving to an isolated cabin in the woods of Vermont, Aaron wrote back. I think I do too.
A wild grin took over her face. Maybe…we could date? Then she quickly added Each other, in case it had been unclear. Maybe…we could date? Each other. This time, Aaron’s response was faster: Okay, he said. Okay, let’s do this.
They ignored each other all week at school, save for a few awkward smiles, which Miri’s best friend, Lexie, had assured her was normal. Then he’d i
nvited her over for Shabbat dinner on Friday. With his family.
All she wanted tonight was some kind of confirmation that he still liked her, that he wouldn’t pull a Let’s just go back to being friends. She was desperate to close the gap between deciding they were together and actually being together. Maybe they could walk into school on Monday holding hands, even sit with each other at lunch.
If this was what being in a relationship was like, it was a good thing Miri was already in therapy.
Aaron’s eyes finally met hers. “Question. What do you call a baby spider?”
“A spiderling, and that’s adorable.” She felt herself relax a little, even though she was still unsure about her car, and maybe car prowlers would target a “pretty safe neighborhood” because no one would be expecting it. “What year did World War One start?”
“Nineteen fourteen,” he said without missing a beat.
This was a hobby of theirs: challenging each other to spontaneous trivia competitions. Because they’d been on Quiz Bowl since freshman year, they’d accumulated a lot of random knowledge. They’d go back and forth until one of them admitted they were stumped. It was very nerdy, and Miri loved it.
After a moment of rummaging through her mental random-knowledge vault, she lobbed back: “What’s the largest freshwater lake in the world?”
“Superior. It’s in the name.” He crossed his arms over his chest, a mock confrontational stance. “Was that supposed to be hard?”
She swatted his shoulder and felt almost light-headed when her hand connected with the fabric of his shirt. It lasted only an instant, but she could tell his skin was warm underneath. She’d had a crush on him for so long. Nearly three whole years of quiet longing, hoping their taunts would turn into something more. It felt absurd and impossible that he was hers now.
“Give me another one,” she said. Are you sure you locked the car? her brain pressed.
They volleyed for a few rounds before he tripped over a question about Henry VIII’s first wife, who was Catherine of Aragon, not Anne Boleyn. But Aaron was a good sport, never a sore loser.
Suddenly Miri’s mind turned on her, as it was so good at doing whenever happiness seemed within reach. They’d played this game as friends. Did that mean nothing had changed between them now that they were (supposedly) dating? She tried to cling instead to the compliment he’d given her a few minutes ago. You look really nice. That compliment was progress. It had to be.
“I’m really glad you came,” he said, smiling wide now, which did little to quell her anxiety. “My parents are excited to meet you.”
The car definitely isn’t locked. If you go inside, someone’s going to break in.
“I’m…excited to meet Mr. and Mrs. Kaufmann.” Was she good with parents? God, she hoped so. She was good with her own parents, stereotypical Seattle liberals who were so invested in their kids that they noticed Miri’s OCD symptoms before she even realized what she was doing was out of the ordinary.
He grazed her sweater sleeve with a few fingers, and she wondered if he had the same reaction to these innocent touches. “Should we go in?”
You need to check the car. You need to do it. Just do it. Do it now.
“Sorry I’m so weird; I’m just gonna make sure my car is locked real quick,” she said.
Aaron knew she had OCD—most people on the team did, thanks to a Quiz Bowl question she’d answered and then explained sophomore year. But he didn’t know the extent of it, that it meant she so often felt like a slave to her own actions, like she did right now.
She hated her OCD. She especially hated it as she knew Aaron was watching, listening as she jogged down his driveway and clicked the lock button on her key fob until her car honked. And then again. And then, just in case her finger had accidentally slipped to the unlock button—you could never be too sure—two more times.
“I’m pretty sure it’s locked,” he said, eyebrows raised as she headed back to his front porch.
Face burning, she followed him inside.
5:22 p.m.
“Miri! Welcome,” Aaron’s mom said in the foyer of the Kaufmann home, pulling her in for a hug that crushed the air out of her lungs. Miri realized she’d now gone farther with Aaron’s mom than with Aaron, which depressed her a little bit. “I’m Naomi, and this is Aaron’s sister, Talia.”
A girl with the same blue eyes as Aaron scowled up at Miri. Aaron had warned her that his eleven-year-old sister was a bit precocious. “Talia can introduce herself, thank you very much,” she said, sticking out her hand for Miri to shake. “A pleasure.”
Miri bit back a laugh as she offered her own hand. “Nice to meet you. Nice to meet both of you.”
Over the top of Talia’s head, Aaron raised his eyebrows at Miri as though to say, See? Told you.
Miri hung her purse on a coatrack but kept her phone in her cardigan pocket. The best word for Aaron’s house was “elegant.” Every shade of white was represented: the cream of the carpet, the eggshell of the walls, the ivory of the curtains. Family photos were spaced evenly, and the furniture looked almost too immaculate to sit on. Miri’s house was a mess of cat hair, mysterious stains, and tchotchkes no one could bear to throw away.
“Miri,” Aaron’s mom said thoughtfully, tapping a lacquered nail against her chin. “Is that short for Miriam?”
“Yeah, but—” Miri broke off. She’d been burdened with a grandma name, and she’d never really loved it. But she felt weird telling Aaron’s mom that. “I’ve just always gone by Miri,” she finished.
“I imagine you know the story of Miriam?”
The story of Miriam…from the Bible? The Torah? Miri did not know the story and definitely didn’t know how to phrase her answer, so, figuring it was safest, she shook her head. Her parents had only ever said that they’d always liked the name. She knew vaguely that the name had some kind of Jewish origin, but she’d been going by Miri for so long that she’d never really researched it.
“She was the sister of Moses and—and Aaron!” his mom said with a laugh. Miri quietly perished from embarrassment. “They led the Children of Israel out of Egypt.”
Miri vaguely recalled having watched an animated movie about this forever ago.
“ ‘For I brought you up out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam,’ ” Talia said, and then added: “I’m studying for my bat mitzvah.”
“She has a photographic memory,” Naomi said, sifting a hand through Talia’s thin dark hair. Naomi’s hair was a light brown, curling softly onto her shoulders. At her throat was a silver Star of David.
“Nearly photographic,” Talia corrected.
“You’d be great on our Quiz Bowl team,” Miri said.
Aaron’s mom checked her watch. “I was just about to light the candles. Why don’t you both wash your hands and meet us in the dining room?”
Miri had only a vague idea of what happened after sundown on Friday nights, most of which she’d formed from research on Wikipedia and JewFAQ.org, which was, apparently, a thing. There weren’t a lot of Jews in her Seattle suburb. Until high school, she’d been the only one in her classes. And now there was Aaron, and they were together, and she was trying to figure out what that meant.
In the dining room, Aaron’s dad was arranging food on the table. Twin ivory candles stood in the center.
“You’re a sport to put up with this one,” Aaron’s dad said after introducing himself as Dan! Dan Kaufmann! and pumping her hand up and down. “I assure you any of his less-than-admirable qualities come from his mom’s side.”
“I heard that,” Naomi said.
“His less-than-admirable qualities,” Talia repeated with a snort, and began ticking items off on her fingers. “Where would we even start? He leaves his dirty socks on the table in the TV room, takes way too long
in the shower, and—”
“Talia!” Aaron’s face had gone scarlet.
“What? We all know what you’re doing in there.”
When Miri realized what she meant, she felt herself blush too.
“Talia, that’s enough,” Naomi interjected, but in a lighthearted way. Miri liked how this family was able to tease each other. It made their Jewishness slightly less intimidating.
Aaron’s mom struck a match, touching the tip to one candle and then the other. Then she held her hands over her eyes and began reciting a blessing in Hebrew. Miri had read about this on JewFAQ: you were supposed to cover your eyes because lighting candles would be considered work on Shabbat, which would officially begin after the blessing.
Once they sat down, Miri marveled at the food. “This is beautiful,” she said. “I love challah.” That was true, at least. Nothing was better than the fluffy sweet bread, especially the innermost, fluffiest bits.
She reached for the braided loaf, but the collective intake of breath from Aaron’s family stopped her as her fingertips made contact.
“Not quite done with the blessings yet,” Naomi said gently.
Miri drew her hand back as though a crocodile had just snapped at it. She tried to convince herself it wasn’t a big deal, but it dragged her religious insecurities up once again. Her cheeks burned as Naomi and Dan exchanged a glance she couldn’t interpret. Maybe she hadn’t paid as much attention to JewFAQ as she should have. She’d assumed, if anything, the dinner would be a learning experience. She’d imagined her feet bumping Aaron’s beneath the table, which would sustain her until the next time they touched on purpose.
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