“That’s up to you.” She added, “At a minimum, just breathe. I promise no one will mind.”
She winked, then walked off, and I stood there awkwardly. I considered sitting down, but that felt weird. Maybe it was perfectly fine to breathe when other people couldn’t, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was polite to sit on them. So I examined the headstone and took a closer look at the small rocks sitting on top of it. If each little stone represented one person coming by, there’d been at least ten visitors. Maybe twenty. I guessed I should probably leave one, too. Only I didn’t see any stones on the ground. And it definitely seemed wrong to take one off another gravestone and move it to Gil’s.
It occurred to me that it didn’t make sense that you always leave the same thing when you visit a Jewish person’s grave: rocks. Why not something that said something about that particular person? Like something they’d actually miss.
“So, how are you doing?” I whispered. I paused, terrified of getting a response. But since Gil’s gravestone, obviously, didn’t jump in, I started talking again to fill the silence. It felt a little weird to be having a conversation with a big slab of granite, but it felt weirder not to. “I’m doing okay,” I said. “Sorry I didn’t bring you a rock, but I didn’t actually expect to be here today.” Again, no answer.
It felt a little frustrating to talk and not get anything back. It reminded me of Gil’s stupid Magic 8 Ball. REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN. REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN. REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN.
Why should I try again?
And what had I done to deserve the sound of silence? From Dash. But even more so from Gil. Gil had done the unthinkable. The unforgivable. He had imposed the permanent silent treatment.
I was freezing, standing there, even with Enid’s scarf. But I also felt a cold, dark anger rising inside of me. I kicked my feet a little to warm up, and I was surprised at how dangerous and wrong—
and irresistible—
it felt to kick Gil’s gravestone. Just a little.
Kick. For going and leaving.
Kick. Kick. For not saying goodbye.
Kick—a harder one that time—for making Dash hate me.
Kick! For making me think you cared when you obviously didn’t. About me or Dash or anyone but yourself.
Kick!! Kick!! For being selfish! Really REALLY selfish!
“Noah?”
I froze, foot on stone.
“You okay?”
I looked up, embarrassed. Enid was standing there, watching me from several graves away.
“I’m pretty cold,” she said. “So, you know. Whenever?”
I nodded. I touched my toe to Gil’s gravestone one more time. This time less of a kick and more of a foot bump. Sort of like Gil and Dash’s sidekick bit.
Tap. I’m still mad. But I’m also still your dude.
I gestured to Enid. I was ready to go.
“You okay?” she said as we walked back to the car.
“Yeah,” I said. Then I remembered something. “Hey, you don’t by any chance happen to have, like, a rock?”
Enid dug around in her pockets for a minute. Then she pulled out something wrapped in a napkin, peeked at it, and held it out to me.
“Just this,” she said. “It’s kind of rocklike.”
“Perfect,” I said. I ran back and set it on Gil’s headstone, then returned to join my sister for the drive home.
I wondered who would be the first to discover, sitting there among all the similar small gray stones, a larger, misshapen item that on closer inspection turned out not to be a rock at all. It might be a bird, giving it a curious peck. Or a squirrel. Or a person. But it felt good to know that in that whole cemetery, there was only one gravestone marked with a collection of rocks…and one rock-hard, extremely salty vegan cookie.
Gil definitely would have liked that.
Next time, I decided, I would bring him a can of seltzer.
—
On the drive home, Enid cranked up her music, which was a relief because it meant I didn’t have to explain why I’d tried to beat up a gravestone. When we finally got home, she gave me a quick hug, but she kept her distance after we got out of the car. I appreciated that because I could tell it was so our moms wouldn’t suspect anything was up and pester her for details.
We walked into the house silently, first her, then me. Our moms, who were both sitting on the couch, looked up. I had almost completely forgotten about the go-kart party until I saw their eyes widen at the sight of my face.
“Jeez Louise, Noah, what happened to you?” asked Karen.
Dash didn’t come back to Hebrew school for several weeks. Every week I would bring his phone, fully charged (thank you, brown rice!), and every week it would stay in my backpack and go home with me again. It was sort of demoralizing to not even have the opportunity to try to give it back to him, but it was also sort of a relief. In theory, I could have brought it to one of the bar or bat mitzvahs on the weekends. But I heard from Adam and Jared and Eli that Dash hadn’t been showing up at them, either, so I had a lot less incentive to go myself. Without Dash, especially after the go-kart disaster, even the promise of a chocolate fountain was not enough to tempt me.
In terms of my own bar mitzvah, there was no way to hide from Noa because she was my partner. To be fair, after I apologized for crashing into her go-kart (and threw in a bonus apology for that day on snack duty), she wasn’t going out of her way to talk to me, but she wasn’t being a total jerk, either. We didn’t work on our Three Stooges project much because Dash wasn’t at Hebrew school and Noa was still of the view that it wasn’t kosher to leave him out. So instead, we took turns reading our parsha out loud and trying to transition from doing the much easier Hebrew text with the vowels to the vowel-less version, like we’d have to when we read from the actual Torah scrolls on the big day.
“That was good,” she admitted after I stumbled through an entire three-sentence chunk without vowels.
“Yeah, well, maybe I won’t totally embarrass you on our big day,” I said. I kind of set her up for putting me down. I mean, she could have easily slammed me with a comment like “You mean you won’t be there?” or something like that.
Instead, she just pointed down to the study sheet.
“Try the next one,” she suggested.
“But that one’s yours,” I said, double-checking the spreadsheet to make sure.
Noa shrugged. “It doesn’t have to be,” she said. If she were anyone else, I would have accused her of trying to dump work on me. But this was clearly her version of a compliment.
—
Two nights later, Jenny and Karen took me to see something called Voices of Now at Arena Stage, a theater on the other side of D.C. They said it was something Stacey had suggested we check out. I was game both because I like live performances and because I’d successfully argued for the right to wear my new sweatpants (on the theory that I’d need to keep my temple pants clean for the upcoming weekend’s service-and-party combo). We got there and found seats in the back. The theater’s walls, floor, seats, and stage were black. The only color was on a banner at the back of the stage with the words VOICES OF NOW on it in big blue letters. I still didn’t know what the name meant. I hoped, but kind of doubted, that Voices of Now might be a comedy showcase.
“Hey, is that Stacey?” I asked Jenny, pointing to a woman sitting several rows ahead of us. It was hard to see because the theater was dark and getting darker, since the performance was about to start, but Jenny squinted and agreed that it looked like her. And not only that, it looked as if Dash and Pete were sitting there with her. I hadn’t seen Pete or Stacey since the shiva, a couple of months earlier. Pete still looked really little, but he wasn’t jumping around like he always used to. Maybe he had a toy or something to keep him quiet—I couldn’t tell from where we were sitting.
The curtain went up and two people came onstage. They introduced themselves as Amanda and Fahrid. “We’re the directors of the play you’re about to see,” Am
anda explained. “It was created through a partnership with the Wendt Center for Loss and Healing. With this particular ensemble, we are able to work with young people who have experienced a loss and are grieving.”
Uh-oh. This was definitely not going to be a comedy showcase.
“In the process of developing this play,” Fahrid added, “we discovered that grief brings up a lot of questions. And it led us to an investigation of what we do with those questions that others have for us. And how grief changes over time.”
Everyone clapped, including us, and as they left the stage, the lights faded to black again. When the lights and some music came up, six kids that looked to be my age or a few years older were standing on the stage. Four of the kids were black and two were white. Three were boys, three were girls. And then I looked more closely at the girls.
And I realized that the one in the middle was Noa.
She didn’t speak at first. Instead, a boy with glasses crouched in the center of the stage while the other five kids faced him. The music faded and one of the other kids, a girl with lots of long braids, spoke to him.
“How are you?” she asked.
“Are you okay?” asked another boy, much taller than the one crouching in the middle. He looked like a basketball player.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” asked Noa.
“This isn’t happening, I wish this weren’t happening,” said the kid in the middle, not answering any of the questions.
A girl with a blond ponytail then pretended to pack a bag. She walked by each of the other kids as they said things to her like “Everything’s going to be okay” and “Do you want to be alone?” and “You should celebrate his life!” She groaned at the last statement and ran to the other side of the stage.
As the play went on, the kids came forward one by one and spoke directly to the audience, telling about their experiences losing someone they loved. All of their stories were really sad. One boy’s dad was killed by somebody trying to rob his store. The blond girl’s older brother overdosed. The boy who looked like a basketball player said his mom came to all his games, even in a wheelchair, until she got so sick she couldn’t anymore. Then, one morning, she didn’t wake up and he had to call 911. After a while, almost all the kids had talked, so it seemed like the play might be nearly over.
And then Noa stepped forward.
Noa talked about how she barely knew her dad because he died when she was so small. She talked about how she wasn’t sure whether she could trust her memories or if she was just making things up in her head to make herself feel better. Then she began to talk about her grandpa. I hadn’t known that he’d died, too, just eight months earlier. He had been like a dad to her, especially before her mom remarried. They were really close and she used to talk to him almost every day. Now he was gone, and not only did she miss him, she said, but losing him made her miss her dad even more.
The other kids leaned in to ask questions and offer suggestions, like they’d done before. Initially, I thought the questions were pretty thoughtful and sincere. I could see that the kids telling their stories found them intrusive, but at first it seemed like maybe they were being overly sensitive.
But after I’d listened to Noa talk about her grandpa, the whole thing kind of shifted for me. Jenny’s dad died before I was born, and Karen’s dad, Grandpa Joe, was still alive, but he had dementia, so now he lived in a nursing home on Long Island, not far from where he had lived with Grandma Beth. I remembered fishing with him, and asking Grandma Beth why he couldn’t come fishing with us anymore. I missed fishing with Grandpa Joe, and I missed having banana sword fights with Gil, and I started thinking about all the things I would never get to do again. And then I thought about Dash and Pete and all the things they’d never get to do at all. Like having their dad called up to the bimah for an aliyah at their bar mitzvahs, which is one of those honors grown-ups seem to love. Not that Gil was super-religious. He was always goofing around with us at temple. He’d sing the song “Ma Tovu” as “My Tofu” just to crack us up. But somehow I always imagined that at Dash’s bar mitzvah he’d be the proudest guy in the room.
Except he wasn’t going to be in that room—or any room—ever again.
So now, when the kids onstage said, “Are you okay?” I felt like they were talking to me. When they said, “Do you need anything?” the hair was standing up on my arms, and when they said, “Why don’t you look sad?” I wanted to jump up on the stage myself and yell at them. And cry. And apologize to Dash and Noa and Enid and my moms and everyone for everything wrong I’d ever done.
When the play ended, we gave the cast a standing ovation.
“That was phenomenal,” said Jenny. Karen and I nodded in agreement, still clapping hard. It wasn’t like any other play I had ever seen. It was sad, but it wasn’t depressing. And there was humor in it, too, even though I wouldn’t tell someone it was a funny play. Most of all, it was clear that all the kids in the play had done something really brave by getting up there and telling us what it was like for them. I felt grateful to all of them for it, even though I only knew one of them.
After the play, there was a reception in the lobby with fruit punch and cookies. I said hi to Noa and her parents, then looked for my moms again. I found them talking to Stacey, who gave me a big hug.
“Noah, it’s so good to see you! And you’re getting so tall,” she told me.
“Really?” I asked, pulling myself up to my full height.
“Uh-huh,” said Stacey, but instead of looking at me, she was glancing around the room. “I’m sorry—Dash is in the car already. He’s missed some school, so he has a lot of homework to catch up on. I just need to find Pete so we can get going.”
“Oh, yeah, no problem,” I said. “Say hey to Dash for me. Is he, uh, doing okay?”
Stacey gave me this really grateful smile. “He’s doing much better, Noah. Thanks so much for asking.”
“Sure,” I said. One stone, successfully placed.
“Actually, Noah, can you do me a favor?” asked Stacey. “Can you look in the boys’ room for Pete?”
“Of course,” I told her, pleased to be asked. Rabbi Fred was right. There were lots of opportunities for small, well-placed stones. I went to the restroom and looked under all the stall doors. No feet. I was about to leave when I thought I heard something. I went back and checked again. One stall was locked, and if I squinted through the crack along the door, I could see that there was someone in there, hiding.
“Pete?” I called.
No response.
“Pete, hey, it’s Noah. Your mom says it’s time to go.”
“Not going.”
Okay, at least I got a response. Now we were getting somewhere. I remembered how me and Dash used to try to convince Gil we were starting SND without him to get him to come downstairs faster. “Pete, they’re serving ice cream out here,” I tried. “Quadruple-scoop cones, you’re gonna miss it, man. I’m gonna have to eat yours. It’s pistachio, cookie dough, tutti-frutti, and fudge ripple with gummy bears on top.”
“Not. Coming. Out.”
“Fine, okay,” I said. And then I had another idea. “In fact, I’m going to stay here, too. It’s very comfy. I’ll just sleep with my head here in the urinal. Oh, look! They left a big, delicious mint on my pillow.”
A giggle escaped from under the stall door.
“Hey…munch, munch, crunch…wait a second…this isn’t a mint…this is…gahhhhh!!!!” I screamed, and ran for the sink, pretending to frantically wash my mouth out. “Gahhhhh!” I continued to wail, making gargling noises until I heard the door unlatch and Pete’s little face appear.
“You didn’t really eat it,” he accused.
“I did too, and you know what I’m going to eat next? You!” I did my best monster claws and lunged at him, and he shrieked with laughter. I picked him up and hauled him over one shoulder, at which point he announced, “Piggyback!”
“Works for me,” I said.
Triumphantly, we
galloped out of the bathroom.
Stacey looked very relieved when we appeared. “Peter Blum, where were you? You need to let me know if you want to go somewhere.”
The only problem? Pete refused to dismount.
“Is it okay if I take him to their car?” I asked Jenny.
“By all means,” said Jenny. “We’ll go get Frau Blue Car and meet you in front of the theater.”
“Wow,” said Stacey. “Petey, today is your lucky day.”
On the way to their parking spot, Stacey leaned in and whispered, “Thank you so much, Noah. Pete really needed this.”
“No problem,” I told her.
As we walked up, I could see Dash sitting in the passenger seat. It occurred to me that maybe he’d think his mom made me come to the car to say hi. My moms do things like that sometimes and it drives me nuts. So when he got out of the car, the first thing I said was, “Don’t worry, your mom didn’t make me come here.”
“Noah ate the pee-pee cake!” Pete announced, jumping off my back.
“Get in the car, Pete,” Dash said in kind of a snarly voice. And then, while his mom helped Pete get buckled in, Dash came around the back of the car to where I was. “We don’t need your help,” he said.
I stared at him. “Your mom asked me to help,” I said.
“Sure,” said Dash.
“She did! What’s your problem?” I asked.
“I don’t have a problem,” said Dash. His arms were folded tightly across his chest, with his fingers jammed in his armpits. Which reminded me of the time he was on crutches.
“Well, I do!” I said. “I miss him, too.”
“That’s just it,” said Dash, pulling his hands out and balling them into fists. “This is not about you. He wasn’t your dad, okay? And Pete’s not your brother.”
“I know that.”
Stacey emerged from the back seat and slammed the door, maybe to get our attention. “Boys?” she said. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” grumbled Dash. Stacey got in the driver’s seat and started the engine.
“Look, I know we can’t pretend nothing’s changed,” I told Dash. “But would it kill you to just talk to me? Sorry!” Instinctively, I cringed because, once again, I had tossed the k-word out without thinking.
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