All Three Stooges

by Erica S. Perl

  “That’s just it!” he said, throwing up his hands.

  “What? I said I was sorry.”

  “Stop walking on eggshells around me. Kill! Die! Death! See? I can take it.”

  “So, you’re okay talking about your dad’s death?”

  “Sometimes. When I want. With who I want.”

  “Okay, fine. I get it,” I said. “I guess I should be glad you have Chris to talk to.”

  Dash tilted his head to one side. “Who’s Chris?” he asked.

  “Chris Stern. Your new best friend?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Dash. I know!”

  “Know what?”

  Stacey leaned her head out the window. “Dash, hon?” she called. “It’s late, and I need to get Pete to bed. Can you guys maybe continue your conversation another time?”

  “Sure! Sorry,” I said, watching Dash get in the car. I really wanted to prove to him that I knew about Chris.

  And then all of a sudden I realized I could. I walked up to the passenger side and knocked. Before he could roll the window down, I pulled Dash’s phone out of my pocket and held it up. I figured he’d roll down his window and I could explain.

  “I’m sorry,” I’d say. “I found it and I meant to give it back right away, honest, but I didn’t. I made some bad choices, but I want you to know that everything I did, I did for a good reason. I just should have told you sooner. And I hope that, eventually, you’ll forgive me.” Maybe he’d be mad—who could blame him? But he’d have to give me some credit for trying to do the honorable thing and make things right. I’d keep carefully placing small stones and rebuilding our friendship. And before long, Rabbi Fred would see us in the hallways at Hebrew school goofing around like old times. I could already see him giving me a knowing wink for showing myself to be such a good, responsible person. Such a mensch.

  But none of that happened. Instead, through the closed window, I saw Dash see his phone in my hand just as Stacey pulled away from the curb.

  “Wait! I just need to—” I called, but it was too late for Dash or his mom to hear me. So I ended up standing there with the phone in my hand, realizing that I had neither carefully placed nor gracefully skipped this particular stone. Instead, my rock had landed with a deafening splash, sloshing water in every direction and knocking everything off course, including me.

  Especially me.

  When we got home Thursday night, I saw that the light was still on in Enid’s room. So I went and caught her up on everything. Meaning: seeing Noa in the play, helping Stacey with Pete, finally getting to talk to Dash, showing him the phone…and not quite successfully returning it to him.

  Enid put her face in her hands and groaned.

  “I don’t believe this,” she said.

  “I know, E! I was trying to give it back. But then Stacey drove off and I missed my chance.”

  “Noah, how long have you had that phone?”

  “I know, all right,” I said. “I just wanted to talk to him first. But when I tried to, he acted all mad and pretended he never even talked to Chris, much less told him about his dad.”

  “So?!” Enid’s eyes flashed with anger. “Maybe he didn’t want anyone to know—not even you. Isn’t he allowed to decide who he confides in?”

  “I mean, I guess, but—”

  Enid ran her hands up the shaved sides of her head, shaking the long purple hair on top into her eyes. “Noah, think about it. This stuff is really hard to talk about. There was a piece just the other day on NPR—” She caught herself and covered her mouth. “Oh no, I’m turning into my mom!”

  “It’s okay, go on,” I said.

  “It was about survivors’ guilt, which people who are close to someone who kills himself often experience. They feel guilty for not seeing warning signs. And they obsess over things the person said or did in the days leading up to the suicide, trying to figure out what they could have done differently.”

  “Oh,” I said, thinking about wishing for a do-over. And dreaming about trying to pull Gil out of a raging river.

  “Yeah, so, put yourself in Dash’s shoes. And while you’re at it, think about how much pressure he probably feels to try to set a good example for Pete. He probably thinks that now he has to act like a dad instead of just a brother. Even though, last I checked, he’s only twelve.”

  “And a half,” I added.

  Enid snorted ruefully. “You need to try again, Noah, to apologize—and I don’t mean for just taking his phone.”

  “I didn’t take it,” I started to say, but she waved her hands at me, making it clear that she didn’t want to hear it.

  “It’s the right thing to do. Besides,” she added, “if he tells the rabbis, you’re toast.”

  —

  I went to Hebrew school the following Tuesday determined to return Dash’s phone and fix everything, no matter what. It was the right thing to do. I was ready to do it. And it was time to do it.

  Ideally, before the rabbis found out.

  My plan was to confront Dash, offer him the apology of the century, and beg for his forgiveness. For old times’ sake, I decided to bring a banana and offer to fall on my banana sword. That was perfect. It was totally going to work.

  It had to work. And I was in luck—for once, Dash was actually there.

  I set my plan into action the minute Dash walked in at the beginning of skills class. First, I was on my best behavior so Rabbi Jake wouldn’t need to speak with me after class. Then, as soon as the break started, I ran downstairs and put my name and Dash’s on the sign-up sheet for electives. This was something we always used to do—signing up each other without talking about it first, because it didn’t matter what elective we did as long as we could be in it together.

  And finally, when I went to get a snack, I grabbed my banana out of my backpack and timed it perfectly so I was right in front of Dash in the snack line. The sixth graders were in charge of selling today.

  “Rice cakes or popcorn?” A girl selling snacks held up both options.

  “Um, popcorn,” I told her.

  “What’s with the banana?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said loudly, for Dash’s benefit. “I wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition.”

  The girl looked at me, puzzled.

  I turned and noticed that Dash was no longer behind me. He must have left the line without getting a snack. I paid for my snack, then waited for Dash to come back to the social hall, hopefully before electives started. When he didn’t return, I finished my popcorn and then, forgetting my plan, ate my banana. I tossed the peel in the direction of the can but missed. I’ve never been great at basketball (or any game involving a ball, for that matter). Clearly, apologizing wasn’t turning out to be my sport, either.

  Unfortunately, I had been in such a hurry to make sure we got the same elective that I didn’t notice what I’d signed us up for. You guessed it: Israeli dance. Still, I convinced myself that this might be okay. The good thing about Israeli dance is that, unlike a discussion elective, you don’t have to sit in your seat and pay attention. You can move around and have side conversations while the music is playing—provided you’re not learning a new dance, which is almost never the case. When the bell rang for electives to start, I saw Dash come out of the bathroom, head for the stairs, and get stopped by Rabbi Fred, who showed him the sign-up sheet. Dash looked irritated, but he turned around and returned to the social hall, where I was, along with Noa, Chris Stern, Deena, Sarah, Maya, and about ten other kids, mostly girls. For some reason, a lot of the girls can’t get enough of Israeli dance.

  The first song started up.

  “Forecast: no rain in sight. Time for everybody’s favorite…Mayim Mayim!” called Solly. Since we almost always did this dance, we all knew we were supposed to hold hands and dance in a circle. I found a spot next to Dash, and we did what we guys always do, which is pull our sleeves over our palms so we don’t actually have to have our hands touch. As
we began to move, I leaned in and caught Dash’s eye.

  “Hey, can I talk to you?” I asked. Dash looked at me as if I’d just arrived on a spaceship from another galaxy. And said nothing.

  Great. More silent treatment. A couple of the girls were looking at us with concern. Possibly because Solly was yelling “Reverse! Go the other way!” but neither Dash nor I had changed direction, so we were having some minor collisions with other people in the circle.

  “Grapevine!” yelled Solly.

  Crud. I was terrible at grapevine and often messed up, even while staring at my feet. Still, I didn’t really have a choice. Meanwhile, I tried again with Dash.

  “Just hear me out,” I said.

  “What?” said Dash impatiently.

  “Ow!” said the girl on the other side of me, whose foot I had apparently stepped on.

  “Sorry,” I told her, which made me remember that the person I was supposed to be apologizing to was Dash. So I turned to him and added, “I just wanted to say I’m sorry about the way I acted the other night, after the play.” Step, “Sorry!” step, step. “And about keeping your phone and everything.” I probably should have stopped, but instead I added, “You don’t have to accept my apology right now, but I’m kind of hoping that eventually you’ll stop hating me.”

  Dash didn’t say anything, so I kept on going.

  “You know what? I don’t even care,” I told him. Step, step, “Sorry!” step. “If it makes you feel better to hate me, go ahead.”

  “Boys, zip it!” yelled Solly. “Mayim, mayim, mayim, mayim, CLAP!” he yelled as we all rushed forward toward the center of the circle.

  Dash kept his eyes down. Possibly because he was trying to make his feet work—he’s almost as bad a dancer as I am. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I said again, “Look, I’m really, really sorry.”

  “Stop saying that!” he said angrily. I’m guessing he didn’t realize that some of my “sorrys” were dance-related.

  “I can’t. You’re my best friend,” I said, which sounded pathetic—I could tell from the look of discomfort on the other kids’ faces. Chris was giving me a particularly weird look, which just made everything worse. Stay out of it, I thought angrily at Chris, even though he hadn’t actually said anything.

  “Just leave me alone,” Dash hissed, and he stopped dancing and dropped my sleeve. Several kids crashed into each other as a result. (“Sorry!”)

  From across the room, Solly yelled, “Keep going, guys. And smile! This is Israeli dance, not the Middle East conflict! It’s supposed to be fun!”

  In retrospect, my mistake was probably that I stopped looking at my feet. That’s why when I stepped on a banana peel—yes, the same one I tried unsuccessfully to toss in the trash and failed to pick up—I slipped and skidded right into Chris, totally by accident.

  “Yo, man, watch out!” said Chris. We had reached the kicking part of the song, but instead of kicking the air, he aimed his foot and kicked me, like I had slid into him on purpose. I totally wanted to kick him back because I felt like, Hey, this isn’t my fault, you started it. I resisted the impulse, but the whole thing got me really riled up, and when I went to clap, his face got in the way. Then Chris hit me back, and Dash started yelling, and suddenly Dash was on the ground. And then I jumped on Chris and hit him a bunch of times for, well, everything. I just couldn’t help it. I hit him for being a jerk and stealing my best friend and all of it.

  Some of the girls started shrieking and I could hear Noa yelling “Stop it, you guys! Stop it!” but other kids were yelling “Fight! Fight! Fight!” and before I knew what was happening Chris slammed my head on the ground and I tasted blood and carpet and then Solly and Rabbi Fred and Rabbi Jake were all there pulling me and Dash and Chris off each other.

  They put me in the kitchen—probably because I was the only one bleeding and there’s an ice machine there—and Chris and Dash in other places. Rabbi Fred stayed with me. He got me to sit with my head back and an ice pack on my nose. I tried to talk but he silenced me with a wave of his hand. “One thing at a time, Noah. For now, just count ceiling tiles, okay?”

  I did as I was told. Thirty-two.

  When they had cleared the social hall, they brought the three of us back there and sat us in chairs and made us all apologize. Then they lectured us for a while, and finally they had us call our parents for early pickup. I didn’t get the chance to talk to Dash or explain, because his mom showed up first, and she took Chris home, too. Seeing the three of them leave together, like I used to do with Dash and his dad sometimes, made me feel like crying. Though it could have been that my nose still hurt like crazy.

  Then I went upstairs with Rabbi Fred and sat with him in his office for a while.

  “Is now a good time to talk?” I asked.

  “Why don’t we hold off until your moms get here? This seems like a conversation we should all have together.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, but I wasn’t really in a position to argue. So Rabbi Fred worked at his desk. And I just sat there listening to the water feature flow and flow. After a while, he asked, “Guess your moms are stuck in traffic or something?”

  I shrugged, then reached into my backpack to check my phone. When I pulled it out, something fell out of my bag. I realized what it was as it hit the floor: Dash’s phone.

  For a second, I thought maybe I could try to pass it off as my own phone. But I was already holding my own phone in my hand. And as it landed, screen-up, it lit up to show that there was an unread message:

  Mom: Hi, Dashie. I’m assuming you got your phone back from Noah like you said you would. Meet you out front after Hebrew school. OK?

  Rabbi Fred looked at the phone, then at me. I considered feigning total ignorance, or looking up at the ceiling, like Harpo Marx does in Animal Crackers when all the silverware is falling out of his sleeve. I even thought about saying something dumb, like I’d been framed or I had no idea what was going on. But my head hurt and there was blood in my mouth and I was tired of lying and fighting and pretending everything was okay.

  “Oh, Noah,” said Rabbi Fred. “Please don’t tell me that’s what I think it is.”

  Then he picked up Dash’s phone.

  “I’m sorry,” I said in a little voice. I had never been this completely hopeless before. My plan to return Dash’s phone and fix our friendship had failed. I had caused problems for so many people: Dash, Noa, Chris, Rabbi Fred. On top of that, my nose was maybe broken. It felt like everything good in my life was gone and I could never get it back. I wondered if this was how Gil had felt.

  Fighting back tears, with a wad of paper towels under my nose in case it began to bleed again, I told Rabbi Fred what had happened. How I had found the phone and wanted to give it back to Dash immediately. But also how Dash was ignoring me and how I believed that if I looked at his texts, I could figure out a way to be a better friend to him. I explained that when I saw that he was mad at me and had a new best friend, it just made it more difficult to do what I knew was right. And that I’d listened to what he said about the sticks and the rocks and tried to do the right thing, only every time I tried, Dash wasn’t there or he didn’t want to talk to me, which made things harder.

  “I know it probably sounds like I’m making excuses,” I said. “I really didn’t mean for things to get so messed up. I wanted to fix things. I just—” I stopped, at a loss for words. I looked at Rabbi Fred, hoping he would understand and tell me that it would be okay.

  Rabbi Fred stared at me for a long time. Finally, he said, “Noah, there’s something I hoped you would have figured out by now. But I suppose now is as good a time as any to learn it. I want to tell you a story, okay? It’s about a young man who had a job after school, working in a bakery.”

  As he spoke, Rabbi Fred rummaged in his desk drawers and found some paper and a pack of markers. With a black marker, he drew a circle and put a dot at the center. As he added numbers along the outside edge, I realized that it was supposed t
o be a clock.

  “So, this young man—I’ll call him Ben—would arrive at the bakery every day at three o’clock in the afternoon.” With the black marker, Rabbi Fred drew the clock’s big hand, an arrow from the center dot pointing straight up at the number twelve. He then took a green marker and drew a smaller clock hand pointing at the number three. “The baker had to get up at the crack of dawn each day to bake the bread and open the bakery for the first customers. When Ben arrived, the two would talk for a few minutes, comparing notes, and then the baker would leave for the day. It was Ben’s job to sell breads and pastries, make change, wipe the counters, sweep the floor, and close the store for the night at eight.” Rabbi Fred took a red marker and drew another small clock hand arrow, this one pointing to the eight.

  “It was a small shop, so every day between the hours of three and eight p.m., Ben was the only one working there. But one evening, at closing time, a woman with a little girl entered the shop. It was a cold night, but the child had no coat and the woman’s dress was torn. The woman asked Ben if she could have a challah roll, and when Ben went to ring it up, she admitted she had no money and turned to leave. ‘Just take it,’ said Ben. Then he filled a bag with bread and gave that to her, too.”

  “That was nice of him,” I said, dabbing at my nose.

  Rabbi Fred continued his story. “The next day, one of Ben’s friends from school came into the shop around five o’clock.” He took an orange pen and drew another clock hand, this one pointing to the five. “Ben’s friend wanted a pastry but had forgotten his wallet. Ben said, ‘This one’s on the house.’ And the following day, around six o’clock, Ben’s stomach started to growl.” Rabbi Fred added another clock hand, this one a blue arrow pointing to the six. “Ben had missed lunch, and closing time seemed a long way off. Unable to wait, he took a muffin from the display case. It was so delicious he had another one, too.