The Trick

by Emanuel Bergmann

  This came as a shock to Max. Parents divorce, sure, whatever, but he’d always assumed that pizza was one of those things in life you could count on.

  At first, Max had taken comfort in the fact that his own parents would never do anything like that to him. They loved him, they loved each other, they loved Bruno the Bunny—a charming animal who mostly sat in his cage and wiggled his pink nose—and that was that. Or so he thought. But then he began to notice small details that weren’t immediately apparent, hints of a larger picture. Mom wiping her eyes, her eye shadow smeared as if she’d been crying. Dad staying away from home a lot, having to “work late,” even on the weekends. Or sleeping on the downstairs sofa, with the TV on, which Max was totally forbidden to do. Doors that had previously been open were now shut. Something was wrong, he could sense it.

  One day, when he came home from school and left his bicycle on the front lawn, he found both Mom and Dad sitting rigidly on the sofa, giving him fake smiles.

  “How about going out for dinner?” Dad said. His voice was too cheerful. Too loud. Alarm bells went off in Max’s head. “You choose,” Dad said.

  “What do you mean?” Max said.

  “Where would you like to eat?”

  Max thought for a moment. And then he said, “How about sushi?”

  His parents looked at him in bewilderment.

  “Are you sure, honey?” Mom asked.

  “Yeah,” Max said. He figured, so what if he never ate raw fish again in his life.

  They went out for sushi. Max had tuna, swordfish, and sea urchin eggs, even though Dad said that sea urchin wasn’t kosher. Max ate it anyway, and it was so gross, he almost puked, and when his parents suddenly held hands and told him that they both loved him very much and that nothing would change for him, he turned red, fought against tears, and started shivering. His mouth was full of fish cum or whatever it was, and in his head, he kept repeating to himself, At least there’ll still be pizza.

  Up until this point, Max’s life had been fairly normal. Max was a standard-issue ten-year-old, lanky, with pale skin and unruly red hair. He wore a pair of glasses that his mom had fixed with electrical tape after Dad had sat on them one day. He lived with his family in a one-story house in Atwater Village. His dad was a “music-licensing attorney,” whatever that meant, and his mom owned a small boutique on Glendale Boulevard, where she sold Asian furniture and various knickknacks. His family also had the usual assortment of aunts, uncles, and cousins, the worst of which probably were Uncle Bernie and Aunt Heidi, who were always bickering. And then there was Grandma, a difficult, high-strung woman who lived on the other side of the mountains, somewhere in the wilderness of the San Fernando Valley, in a far-away place called Encino.

  The news of Max’s parents’ impending divorce spread through his class like a wildfire. Joey Shapiro gave him a sympathetic hug, and the girls started looking at him differently. Even Myriam Hyung, with whom he’d had hardly any contact so far, found a few kind words to say.

  “Sorry about your folks.”

  Yada yada, he thought. But realizing she was only a girl, not capable of really understanding, and not wanting to be completely dismissive of her feeble attempt at human kindness, he graciously accepted her condolences and replied, “Yeah, whatever.”

  Today he was a man. Your parents’ divorce, Max realized, is your true bar mitzvah. It is a rite of passage separating boys from men. He began to realize how many of his classmates came from what Rabbi Hannah Grossman called “broken families.”

  At first, being from a broken family was awesome. Nothing changed much in the beginning, except that Mom now slept alone in the master bedroom and Dad had to make do on the foldout couch in the living room, which was annoying. Because that’s where the TV set was, which Max had always regarded as his personal property. Now Dad took over, watching sports all the time. But there were advantages. Max relished playing the role of martyr. He was showered in an amount of attention and comic books previously unknown to man. His mom bought him the latest issue of Spider-Man as well as several Batman trade paperback collections. Used to be that Max had to choose: Marvel vs. DC. Dad always said that life is about the choices we make. Which, as it turned out, was a load of crap. You could, in fact, have everything—that’s what being an adult meant. Without a doubt, his parents’ separation was the best thing that had ever happened to his comic book collection.

  But deep down, he was worried. He had a secret. He knew why his parents wanted a divorce: it was his fault. Sure, according to Mom, they had to split because Dad had not been able to keep his hands off that “slut of a yoga instructor.” But Max knew the truth.

  It had happened a few weeks before the fateful sushi night. Max had once again been forced to clean out the bunny cage. Mom had repeatedly pointed out to him that he was the one who had wanted the damn rabbit in the first place. Therefore, bunny duty fell entirely on him. But this time, he asked Dad to do it. Just this once. Pretty please, with sugar on top. Max wanted to go to the movies with Joey Shapiro. And Dad said no. This led to an argument; then Max lost his patience and grumbled at Dad, and Dad defended his point even more bitterly.

  So instead of enjoying popcorn and ice cream in an air-conditioned movie theater, Max had to clean out bunny poo. So unfair! When he finally, with much protest, brought out the trash bag, Dad stood by the door and glared disapprovingly at him. “Watch your tone,” he said. “That’s not how this works, young man. One more peep from you, and we’ll give up Bruno for adoption.”

  Max threw the trash out, like he was supposed to, but he could feel torrents of rage roiling inside him. Give up Bruno! How mean!

  Then he saw a penny by the trash bin and remembered Grandma saying that if you find a penny, you can pick it up, close your eyes, and make a wish. You mustn’t tell anyone what you wished for. And it’ll come true.

  He picked up the penny, squeezed his eyes shut as hard as he could, and wished that Dad was gone. Just like that. When he opened his fist, the penny was still in his hand. He heard the distant rumble of thunder in the San Gabriel Mountains. It would rain soon. Max suddenly felt bad. He looked around and immediately squelched his thought, but it was too late. Someone—God, maybe?—must have heard him thinking. A terrible chain of events was set in motion.

  For the first few weeks, Max thought he’d gotten away with it. Until the night at the sushi place. That’s when Max knew that he had cursed his family. Except the bunny, who seemed okay.

  Initially, Max tried not to think about his part in this tragedy too much. Instead, he enjoyed the bounty that came with his parents’ divorce. His mom started giving him plenty of gifts, presumably to outdo Dad.

  “I’ll get you anything you want for your birthday,” Mom would say to him, in an attempt to purchase his feelings. Max was easily purchased.

  “Anything?”

  Every toy was proof that his parents still loved him. But the proof was fleeting. There was no more certainty in his life. Everything began to change, and Max didn’t particularly appreciate change. Turned out it wasn’t all that cool to come from a broken family. Au contraire, he realized there were consequences! There was a lesson to be learned, a lesson that his heroes—Spider-Man and Joey Shapiro—had learned the hard way.

  Telling their son was one of the hardest things Harry and Deborah Cohn had ever done. Harry in particular dreaded that moment, since he usually tried to avoid confrontation. Deborah not so much. Though officially a Buddhist, she seemed to thrive on conflict. Harry always joked that she was a “Raging Buddhist,” but she didn’t find that funny. In fact, she found very little about her husband funny these days. Seeing him mope around the house, with that guilty look on his face! Traits that she used to find endearing were now nauseating to her. She could hardly wait for him to get out.

  But, of course, there was Max. They even considered staying married for his sake. Or rather, Harry considered i
t. Deborah didn’t.

  “I want you out,” she said firmly. She said it not just because she wanted to punish Harry, although that was certainly a factor. No, she said it because his affair had left her deeply wounded. She needed to be rid of him, and couldn’t stand to look at him anymore. It was like tearing off a Band-Aid. You did it quickly.

  “But what about Max?” Harry whined.

  “Max,” Deborah replied, “is better off without you.”

  And so it went. They tried to remain civil to each other, but almost every discussion ended in a heated argument.

  “How are we going to tell him?” Harry asked Joey’s mother when she stopped by their house one afternoon to pick up her son.

  “Try to make it as easy on him as you can,” said Mrs. Shapiro, who had some experience in these matters. “And do it on neutral ground, such as a restaurant.”

  Deborah nodded and typed some notes into her phone.

  One sunny morning not long afterward, Deborah took the freeway to Woodland Hills. The law firm of Gutierrez & Partners was on the third floor of a vast glass monstrosity of an office building, a monument to bad taste. The inside wasn’t any better. The waiting room was adorned with a painting of dogs playing poker. Who buys crap like that? Deborah wondered. Divorce attorneys, evidently. Then she was called into his office.

  Mr. Gutierrez, the senior partner, stood up and shook her hand limply. He was an unnaturally cheerful man, given the nature of his profession, a smiling, paunchy, and jolly executioner of love.

  “What can I do for you?”

  She explained the situation, and he listened, nodding silently. After some back-and-forth, Harry and Deborah had decided on an “uncontested divorce.” Deborah had found the term online. It simply meant that they weren’t going to court over their belongings, or to fight over custody. Mr. Gutierrez seemed a tad disappointed to hear that, having looked forward to many billable hours.

  He explained that an uncontested divorce was simplicity itself. Deborah would file the papers and then they would be sent over to Harry, so he could look them over. Provided that both parties agreed on the terms, the petition would then be sent over to the LA Superior Court, where a judge would review it. If everything was deemed acceptable, both parties would sign the divorce decree and that would be that. They could be divorced within a matter of weeks and their life together would finally be over.

  The wedding had been way more complicated, Deborah thought.

  One thing was obvious to Harry and Deborah: they didn’t want to subject Max to prolonged court battles. They didn’t want him to have to choose between one parent and the other. They agreed on how to proceed once Harry moved out, which was taking way too long, in Deborah’s opinion. They decided that Deborah would have Max during the week, and Harry would keep him from Friday to Sunday. He would pick him up and drop him off at school, so that there’d be as little contact between Harry and Deborah as humanly possible.

  These were trying days for them all. Harry started drinking again, and Deborah took up smoking, a habit that she thought she’d kicked. Both began having difficulties in their respective careers. Deborah began missing meetings with wholesalers and suppliers, despite her frantic use of modern technology, and Harry simply showed up to the office a little bit too late every day, frequently hungover. His coworkers were reasonably forgiving, at least for a while. Harry soon realized that getting divorced bought you a lot of points at the water cooler. The women in the office began doting on him. But he found it hard to concentrate, and his performance was beginning to suffer.

  Both Deborah and Harry felt as if their lives were slipping through their fingers like sand.

  THE MIRACLE

  Lying on the bed in their small apartment, Rifka Goldenhirsch cursed the world. She cursed herself and her husband, but most of all, she cursed the angel who had gotten her pregnant. Her husband Laibl remained at her side, holding her hand like a fool.

  “There, there,” he said, patting her hand in a misguided attempt to comfort her.

  Rifka’s legs were propped up on two rickety chairs. There was a pot of water boiling on the stove, clean towels were lying beside the bed, and Magda the Midwife was stationed between her legs, eagerly awaiting the outcome.

  Rifka had grown up in the country, in a small village near Plzeň. As a young girl, she had sometimes watched as the cows were calving, a seemingly agonizing procedure that took several days and was accompanied by loud and indignant mooing. Now she understood how they must have felt. And her useless schmuck of a husband was sitting next to her, condescendingly patting her hand.

  Magda looked up at her and said, “I can see the head.”

  Rifka moaned.

  “Push,” Magda said.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  Magda was a young goyta, a gentile, who lived just outside Josefov. She was said to be one of the best midwives in the city, which meant that most of the children she helped to deliver actually lived. Rabbi Goldenhirsch had assiduously put aside a few coins each month to be able to afford her services when the time came. And now the time had come. The days were getting warmer, and summer would see a new child. Magda dabbed at Rifka’s forehead with a clean handkerchief; Laibl petted her hand. Her child took its own sweet time to come out.

  But finally, it did.

  Magda held the baby by the legs, cut the umbilical cord with a hot kitchen knife, and smacked its tuches.

  The baby started crying, a sharp scream piercing the thick and sweaty stillness of the room. Magda wiped it off with the warm towels, careful not to burn or blemish it. Then she handed the child to its mother. “A boy,” she said. “Strong as an ox.”

  Rifka took the child in her arms, looked at it, and fell in love. This was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

  “What should we call him?” said Rifka, out of breath, exhausted but at peace with the world.

  “How about Moshe?” said Laibl with a hint of sarcasm.

  “Moshe?” asked his wife. “Why Moshe, of all things?”

  “What, you don’t like ‘Moshe’?” answered the rabbi. “It’s a fine name. Don’t you think?”

  “Like the Locksmith?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Like the prophet,” Laibl replied. “Moses.” There was a strange and determined gleam in the rabbi’s eyes, and Rifka felt it better to relent.

  And so it came to pass that the boy was named Moshe Goldenhirsch. Even though his father would occasionally question his lineage, especially after one too many glasses of pilsner, he was, all in all, happy to have a child. He tried telling himself that he didn’t care who the father was, and he thanked God every night for the miracle.

  Moshe Goldenhirsch turned out to be a small and sickly child. Not long after his painful birth, life seemed to drain from his body. He lay in his crib next to the stove, his skin as pale as wax, and he hardly moved, making pitiful gurgling sounds.

  Rifka sat by his crib and sang him a song:

  Far above in the distant sky

  The wind carried a lonely cry

  Far above, where eagles fly

  Her singing did nothing to better Moshe’s health. Eventually, Rifka became so worried that she left Josefov in the middle of the night to fetch a doctor. Her husband stayed behind with the child. He had told her about the doctor, a man named Ginsky. Rifka ran all the way from Josefov across to the other side of the Vltava River, then up the hill to the castle. The night air was wet and cold, and she was drenched in icy sweat by the time she reached her destination. The sidewalks were covered with red and yellow leaves, and with chestnuts that had fallen from the trees. At last, she found the doctor’s house, near the Hrad Castle. She could see the many turrets looming in the night sky, and felt the gargoyles of St. Vitus Cathedral glaring down at her. The doctor lived in a splendid art-nouveau mansion. She banged on the door, and after a
few minutes a disheveled maid answered. Her face was flushed and she was straightening her underskirt with her left hand. Her eyes gazed coldly up and down the sweaty, bedraggled woman.

  “Dr. Ginsky,” Rifka uttered.

  “He has already retired,” said the maid curtly.

  “My husband sent me.” Rifka pointed out that her husband wasn’t just anyone, he was the rabbi of the Staronová Synagogue.

  “A Jew?” asked the maid with some amazement.

  “He said to tell the doctor that he helped him once.” And then she added, pleadingly, “Please. My child is dying.”

  Her words moved the maid’s heart. “Come in,” she whispered. “Wait here.” She pulled Rifka into the villa’s foyer, closed the door, and then hurried upstairs.

  Rifka looked around the entrance hall. What luxury! A tall, wooden clock was ticking ominously. Expensive furs and hats hung on a coatrack, and mahogany walking sticks protruded from an umbrella stand. Dr. Ginsky, small and pudgy, came hurriedly down the carpet-covered staircase. He was dressed in a nightshirt, which he nervously struggled to adjust. His face was red, his glasses foggy, and the few hairs remaining around his mostly bald pate were sticking straight up. It occurred to Rifka for the first time that maybe she had interrupted the doctor and the maid during some important business.

  She looked at him imploringly and held out her hand.

  Ginsky stared at her. “I’m afraid,” he said, “I cannot shake your hand, since you are a member of the Mosaic tribe.” He looked at the floor, embarrassed.

  “I understand,” said Rifka and nodded. She did not want to do anything that might incur his displeasure. After an awkward moment, she dropped her outstretched hand and nervously wiped it on her wet skirt.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure of your unannounced visit?” the doctor asked.

  “My child is ill.”

  “And I am the only medical practitioner in all of Prague?” he asked.