Sons of the 613

by Michael Rubens

The teasing was vicious. It was weeks before I could walk the halls without someone sneering, “It’s really the best rendition.”

  “It’s my fault,” continues Josh. “I’ve been a crappy older brother.”

  I don’t rush to disagree, and then realize that maybe now is a good time to start doing so.

  “No, you’ve been a . . . good older brother. You really have. You don’t have to do anything else. Really.”

  “No. I should have been there for you, and I haven’t because I’ve been so caught up in my own crap. There are things you need to know. Things I wish I had known. Things I wish someone could have taught me.”

  How not to get expelled? I nearly say, but my instinct for self-preservation wins out.

  “I mean, look at you,” says Josh.

  I look at me.

  “When’s the last time you did any exercise?”

  “I have gym every day.”

  “I’m not talking about kickball. Or jerking off.”

  “I don’t jerk off!”

  “Really? I didn’t know you were born without a dick.”

  “I play soccer.”

  “Okay, so the last exercise you did was last summer.”

  “So what? So I’m not a jock.”

  “Not a jock? You’re in the chess club.”

  “I’m not in the chess club. I occasionally play chess. Some of the people I play with are in the chess club. It’s a false syllogism to suggest that indicates I’m in—”

  “Did you just say ‘syllogism’?’”

  “What? No. Maybe.”

  “This is exactly my point. You’re in the chess club—”

  “I’m not in the chess club.”

  “—and you use words like ‘syllogism.’”

  “What, I’m not manly if I use big words?”

  “You still play D&D.”

  I don’t have an answer for that. He sits back and crosses his arms, triumphant: check and mate.

  It’s true. Danny, Steve, Paul, and I have been playing faithfully for four years, introduced to it by the assistant librarian. The librarian vanished after a few months, at which point our parents sat us down individually for awkward conversations about whether or not he’d ever done anything that made us feel uncomfortable. That’s when Josh taught me the term pedophile, which he described in traumatic detail. But the four of us keep playing secretly. When we talk about it at school—if ever—we use code. We all instinctively understand where D&D players are ranked in the junior high school social hierarchy and that it’s probably time to hang up our dice. Still, you don’t just walk away from an honestly earned level-nineteen half-elf cleric.

  “Isaac,” says Josh, “you can’t keep being a nervous little kid who runs to Mom for everything.”

  “I don’t run to Mom for everything. Sometimes I run to Dad.”

  “You know why you’re such a smartass? Because you’re weak, and scared of everything. You want to keep being a scared smartass?” he says. “Huh?” he adds when I don’t respond.

  “Hold on, I’m trying to think up a smartass answer.”

  He snorts and sits back in his chair. “You’re smarter than me, Isaac. You’re certainly smarter than I was at your age. And you know what you’re like? All those supersmart, weakass Jews who got slaughtered by the Nazis.”

  There it is, finally. I’m surprised it took him so long to get to it. Josh, who my dad says always wants to refight the Second World War. Josh, who transformed himself into SuperJew—the single most effective thing he ever did to annoy my parents—and who used to go around Edina wearing a yarmulke. A black one with skulls and crossbones on it.

  “The world doesn’t need any more weak Jews.”

  I’m not sure what an appropriate response is to that, so I say nothing. I sip at my lemonade, avoiding his gaze, watching a squirrel skitter nervously along the branches of the tree that rises above the deck, the leaves making shooshing and rustling noises as he agitates his way along. I can feel Josh watching me.

  “How’s your lemonade?” he asks.

  “Fine, I guess.”

  “Good.”

  He takes another drink of his lemonade, observing me, thinking. He’s silent long enough that I finally look over at him. His expression makes me even more nervous.

  He finishes his drink and puts his glass down, then turns in his chair so that he’s square to me. “Isaac,” he says, “we’ve got a very short time until your bar mitzvah.”

  “I know.”

  “And you know what we’re going to do?”

  Oh no.

  “Josh, all I need to do is memorize my haphtarah.”

  “We’re going to make you into a man.”

  “Josh, no. Please. I just want to go and watch my haphtarah DVD—”

  “You know, in primitive cultures, the boys would have to go on a quest or pass some sort of painful challenge before they could be declared a true man.”

  “That’s fantastic, Josh.”

  “They’d put them out in the wilderness to fend for themselves, to fight other villagers—”

  “We live in the suburbs.”

  “There’s ritual tattooing . . .”

  “Great.”

  “ . . . fasting . . .”

  “I’m not fasting.”

  “ . . . scarification . . .”

  “I’m gonna go now.”

  I put my glass down and stand up. He grabs my upper arm as I try to slide away and swings me back around. He grabs my other arm with his other hand. I squirm. He holds fast.

  “Isaac.”

  “What?” I’m not looking at him.

  “Isaac,” he repeats. “Look at me.”

  “Josh . . .”

  He gives me a shake. “Look at me.”

  I look. He’s staring into my eyes with an earnest, determined expression, and it’s giving me goose bumps. My heart starts to thump.

  “It’s time, Isaac.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “It’s time.”

  “No, I really don’t think it is.”

  “It’s time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “Time for you to become a man.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE QUEST BEGINS

  “What do you mean, you’re not going to make it?!”

  My best friend, Danny Wong, calling at 4:23 in the afternoon, his tone incredulous.

  “I can’t. I can’t come.”

  My tongue feels thick. It’s hard to talk.

  “It’s D&D Sunday! Steve and Paul are here!”

  “I know.”

  “We never miss D&D Sunday!”

  “I know!”

  Some sweat escapes from the saturated kamikaze headband and makes its way into my left eye, burning it. I wipe at it uselessly with a grimy, sunburned forearm.

  “Can’t you just ride your bike over? We can wait.”

  “No, you don’t understand. I—”

  “Isaac! Are you on your cell phone?”

  My brother, shouting down to me from the porch, looking up from his copy of Guns and Ammo.

  “Why can’t you come?” Danny again. “What’s going on?”

  “I can’t explain now,” I slur. I feel vaguely delirious. Even holding the cell phone is an effort. “I’m having the weirdest frigging day of my life. My brother—”

  “Isaac!” shouts my brother again. He has put down his magazine and is standing up.

  “Are you in trouble? Where are you?”

  “I’m in my backyard.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Digging.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Digging! I’m digging!”

  I’m aware that I’m not making much sense. I can see in my head what a coherent sentence would look like, but it would take too much energy to move it from my brain to my mouth.

  “Dude, are you wasted or something? You sound wasted.”

  “No! I’m digging! I’m exhausted!”

  Mr. Olsen is staring
at me. He’s standing in his backyard, which is next to ours, holding a weed whip and staring at me. I imagine he’s wondering what I’m doing here shirtless, wearing a headband, and digging a hole in the lawn. And wearing camouflage war paint on my face. He’s probably noticing that. I manage a limp gesture similar to a wave. He cautiously waves back.

  “I get that you’re digging,” says Danny. “What the hell are you digging?”

  “Isaac, get off the phone!”

  Josh is coming down the steps. I turn away from him, leaning on the shovel like a crutch, shoulders hunched forward, head down, trying to finish the conversation before he arrives.

  “Danny, I can’t talk right now.”

  “What is going on? What is it you’re digging?”

  “A fire pit.”

  “A fire pit?”

  “Yes!”

  “Isaac! I’m warning you!”

  “Um, why are you digging a fire pit?”

  “It’s part of the Quest!”

  “The what?”

  “It started this morning!”

  “What did?”

  “Everything! The Quest!”

  “Isaac, are you crazy? Now you just sound crazy!”

  “I don’t know. I might be. I think I might have sunstroke. Listen—I may not be in school tomorrow.”

  “What?! Don’t blow it now!”

  Three weeks left until the end of the year, and I haven’t missed a day. Jerry’s Ice Cream Parlor is donating a fifty-dollar gift certificate to every student with perfect attendance, and Danny, Steve, and Paul are counting on me.

  “Danny, screw the ice cream. I might not even be alive tomorrow.”

  “Dude, what is going on over there?”

  “It’s my brother. He—”

  That’s as far as I get before Josh tears the phone out of my hand. I can still hear Danny’s voice saying, “He what? He what? What’s he doing? Isaac?” in the instant before Josh hurls the phone away. I follow its trajectory and note its landing spot, wondering what it sounds like on Danny’s end as the phone disappears into the creek.

  “I warned you,” says Josh.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE QUEST CONTINUES

  MERIT BADGE: CAMPING

  I can hear the high-pitched whine as the mosquito comes around for another pass. I swat at it lethargically, my palm and fingers thudding slackly against the side of my skull like a glove filled with sand.

  I groan.

  I roll on my side, groaning some more with the effort, feeling the hard, lumpy ground through the sleeping bag. The tent is hot and stuffy and smells like mildew. I check my watch, my only source of light. It’s 11:52 P.M. on the worst Sunday of my entire life.

  The Quest has begun.

  That’s what Josh has been calling it: the Quest.

  He first used the term on Saturday, while we were drinking our lemonades on the back porch. He spelled out my choices in stark terms: I could either (a) bravely rise to the challenges that he’d be choosing for me as a rite of passage, and thus seize the Glorious Mantle of Manhood, or (b) he could just go ahead and tell our mom about Yoel and my lies and ruin my life forever.

  Glorious Mantle of Manhood, here I come.

  “What will we do?” I asked.

  “Lots of things. Challenges. Sometimes just hanging out with me, get you out of your shell, give you some actual life experience.”

  “What will the challenges be?”

  “They’ll be revealed at the appropriate time.”

  “Thanks, sifu Josh.”

  I take it the appropriate time was five A.M. That’s when Josh violently shook me awake this morning and then yanked the covers off the bed when I tried to go back to sleep. I was still stunned and disoriented when he shoved me out the door for a nightmarish stumble around the block, the headband around my forehead and the war paint on my face, Josh jogging next to me and bellowing abuse.

  From what I can tell so far, physical fitness will be a big part of the Quest. After our run there was an agonizing sequence of squats and sit-ups and pull-up attempts and pushups, with Josh standing over me in classic hands-on-knees coach position, deliberately miscounting the number of repetitions I’d completed.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” I pleaded.

  “It’s the Quest, Isaac. We need to break you down before we build you up, shock you out of your normal patterns.”

  “I think you’ve done that. Can we stop now?”

  “Stop? This is just the beginning, Isaac. We have two full weeks together.”

  “Josh, we have all summer to do this.”

  “No,” he says, “we have now. I’m going to be busy.”

  Doing what, I think, but before I ask it he says, “By the time these two weeks are done, you’re going to be a transformed person, and you’ll be thanking me. You’re going to know the pride of real achievement. You’re going to have a whole set of new experiences. You’re going to learn a lot about the world and yourself. You’re going to earn your manhood.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to reach manhood.”

  “Shut up. All right, you’ve done nine pushups, and you need to do ten. Go.”

  “I did ten!”

  “GO!”

  Around seven thirty A.M. Lisa wandered into the living room, sleepy-eyed, roused by our high-volume discussion of Josh’s counting. She stood in the doorway in her pajamas, regarding me as I lay on the floor like roadkill.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Murdering me,” I muffled into the carpet fibers.

  “We’re trying to turn Isaac into a man,” said Josh. “It’s not going very well.”

  “Oh.”

  Pause.

  “Why is he wearing makeup?”

  “Because he’s on a sacred quest,” said Josh. “He’s a warrior.”

  “Oh, good,” I said. “And I was worried that there wasn’t a reasonable explanation.”

  “Shut up, Isaac,” said Josh.

  I watched Lisa’s feet approach until she was standing next to me, her toes about six inches from my face. They seemed to be examining me.

  “You look stupid,” Lisa said after a pause, her voice coming from somewhere up above.

  “Mmph,” I said.

  Her feet disappeared from view as she walked over me, using my back as a step.

  The phone rang. I closed my eyes and listened to Josh talking to our mother, grateful for the break.

  “No, it’s not even eight yet. No. No, eight. Mom, I don’t care if it’s supposed to be six hours’ difference, it’s before eight here. Right.”

  He listened.

  “Yes, Mom, we had a massive rager of a party last night and trashed the place. We burned it down.”

  On the bulletin board is the simple contract my mother made Josh sign before they went to Italy. It has two words: NO PARTIES. There is no sign that says FEED YOUR SIBLINGS or DON’T ABUSE ISAAC. Just a sign that says NO PARTIES.

  Josh handed the phone to Lisa. Lisa talked to my mom. Somehow the fact that I was lying on the floor didn’t come up. Josh took over the phone again.

  “Yeah, he’s up. Hold on.”

  He got down on one knee next to me and held out the phone. “Say hi to Mom.”

  He pressed the phone against the side of my face and then suddenly drew it back and gave me a look, a look that left no doubt about what boundaries I shouldn’t cross. Then he held the phone against my head again.

  “Talk,” he said.

  “Hi, Mom,” I mumbled into the phone.

  “Hi, sweetie! You’re up early.”

  “Mmm.”

  “You should see it here, Isaac. It’s fantastic.”

  “Mmm.”

  Long description of the sights they’d been seeing and food they’d been eating. I half nodded off.

  “Isaac?”

  “Mmm?”

  “You know what I was thinking?”

  “Mmm?”

  “I want you to call Eric Weinber
g.”

  I was suddenly more awake.

  “What? Mom, no.”

  “I was e-mailing with his mother, and I think he needs some friends right now.”

  “You’re calling me from Italy to tell me that?”

  “I want you to call him and invite him over this week.”

  “Mom . . .”

  “Do it this week, Isaac! Is everything else going okay?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Is Josh treating you all right?”

  Pause.

  Threatening look from Josh.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I miss you, sweetie.”

  “Mom—”

  “Okay, talk to you soon, Mom,” said Josh, pulling the phone away from me. “Bye.”

  He hit the end call button. “Right,” he said, “time for some wrestling.”

  There was wrestling. There was the punching bag. I cleaned the bathrooms. I cleaned the kitchen. I cleaned my room. I cleaned Josh’s room. I cleaned Lisa’s room. I have a vague recollection of cleaning the gutters. Any complaints were met with demands to drop and do ten pushups. As I slaved, Josh treated me to wise anecdotes about tribal elders and secret journeys and spirit animals and Apache vision quests.

  “Spent some time on Wikipedia last night, huh?”

  More pushups.

  I lugged the firewood from the cellar to the garage, which I pointed out was a task that Josh was supposed to have done weeks ago but had been avoiding. This led to yet more pushups and another discussion about whether Josh could accurately count to ten, which then led to Josh grabbing me by my upper arms, lifting me off the ground until I was nose-to-nose with him, and issuing an elaborate threat that was so intensely gross, I’m still trying to get it out of my mind.

  By midday I was exhausted. By midafternoon, as I was finishing mowing the lawn, I had moved into a whole new realm of physical pain and was beginning to understand the whole vision quest thing. I cut the engine and collapsed onto the lawn and lay on my back, breathing slow and evenly, the sun hot on my face and bright through my closed eyelids, the birds suddenly loud after the racket from the lawnmower. I smelled newly cut grass and dandelions and hints of gasoline, and waited for the voices of my ancestors to speak to me, to tell me that things couldn’t possibly get worse.

  The light darkened, and a voice addressed me. “Get up,” said the voice. “Time to pitch the tent.”