by Alison Pick
“And then,” Jordan wrote, “you get to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, where the history is better known.”
Around me the congregation is still laughing. I think of Debra’s words: “It’s a defensiveness born of persecution.”
I know that she’s right. Still, an incredible loneliness rises up in me. I remember back to the minister on Christmas Eve, to the thin wafer on my tongue: “The body of Christ, given for you.”
Did I feel it was literally the body of Christ? No. But I felt welcomed by the symbol, included. Gathered in. Whereas here I feel totally alone.
twenty
I RETURN TO THE SYNAGOGUE the next day to hear Eli speak about his book. It’s my last chance to see him before he leaves for Paris. I know with a newfound certainty that he can’t give me what I want. That a Jewish partner would be a shortcut, a hindrance rather than a help. Still, I’m stubborn. I refuse to let him go without some kind of resolution.
The event is held on the top floor, in a spacious solarium from which you can see the sparkly lights of the city spread out below you. When I arrive, fifteen minutes early, the place is already packed. Eli stands at the podium in a leather jacket that he doesn’t remove despite the stifling heat. I try to catch his eye, but he’s riffling through his papers, glancing around at everyone but me.
He gives a little wave, a half smile at a table of young women.
Rabbi Klein has the task of introducing him. She is as gracious as ever, listing his accomplishments, literary and otherwise, and welcoming him to the stage. Eli opens with a prepared speech. He talks about what it was like to write Help Me, and about the mixed reaction he’s had from the Jewish community in general and the Orthodox community in particular. He is poised, but from across the room I can see his pages shaking slightly in his hands. When he’s finished, the floor is open for questions.
A young woman in heavy eye makeup and track pants with Juicy written in sparkly cursive on the rear stands up. “That part you read about Israel, and the fence between Israel and Gaza. Did you mean that the fence is bad? Because the fence has meant way fewer suicide bombers.”
Eli waits a beat.
“It isn’t good or bad,” he says. “What I was really trying to say is that we need to get past good versus bad.”
An older man with a red kippah perched on the top of his head jumps in. “Ambivalence is fine, but aren’t there some things that are clearly right or wrong? Like the question of Israel’s right to exist? Hamas denies even this, if I’m not mistaken.”
The questions have veered toward the political, toward the small portion of his book that deals with Orthodoxy in Israel. Eli uses the sleeve of his leather jacket to wipe perspiration from his forehead. He hesitates, then says, “Again, I think it’s more complex than right or wrong. Especially when it comes to issues of land ownership. Which, of course, should resonate with us here in Canada.”
I cheer silently, but the questioner’s face is blank.
“Because of what we’ve done with our Native Canadians’ land,” Eli clarifies.
But the man won’t be diverted. “Hamas denies us. Am I right?”
Eli sighs. “Yes,” he says. “But not us. Israel. And they deny it within their own historical context.”
The man’s eyes widen. “You agree with that?”
A voice from the audience shouts, “We are Israel!” There’s a smattering of applause.
Eli flushes. He ignores the comment from the audience and addresses the man in the red kippah. “Of course not. I just … Honestly? I don’t have an answer for Hamas,” he says.
After the question period, Rabbi Klein stands back up to thank Eli. She says, “Eli, you have helped open our hearts. We agree with much of what you say. And your words are beautifully written.”
She is generous and kind in her acknowledgement that he’s been controversial.
After, there’s a long line of people waiting for Eli to sign their books. I join the queue. Several people ahead of me is a striking woman with dark eyes and glossy brown hair. She’s a head taller than all the other women in the room, and when she stands next to Eli, they look like two of a set. For a moment I think this might be his girlfriend, returned from wherever she’s been travelling, but I remember: his girlfriend is a redhead.
The woman reaches the front of the line. She and Eli speak intently. He leans in, touches her elbow. I fiddle with my phone, pretend to check my messages. The crowd clears out, but their conversation continues. Eli says something to the tall woman, and a storm of emotion crosses over her face—first sadness and then something close to rage.
I take a few steps back to give them space.
The solarium is now almost empty. Soon I’ll have no choice but to go. I want the chance to say goodbye, but I can’t very well stand here while they get into an argument. I reach for my bag; Eli looks over and sees me. He gestures me over.
I hesitate, but he gestures again. “Alison, this is Shayna. Shayna is a musician. Alison is a writer.”
We eye each other warily.
The woman—Shayna—sighs. “What do you write?” she asks, clearly out of obligation. I mutter something about my novel-in-progress.
“And you?” I ask. “Do you play the …”
But I can’t think of the name of a single instrument.
“I’m a singer,” she says. She’s pulling on her jacket. “And a kindergarten teacher,” she adds.
“But mostly a singer,” says Eli, making a face to indicate how good she is.
Shayna pulls her long hair back and ties it with an elastic from her wrist. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to get going.”
“So long,” she says to Eli. “Have a great trip.”
“Thanks,” he mumbles, but she’s already disappeared out the door.
Eli and I turn to face each other properly. He looks happy to see me, relieved, although perhaps just in comparison to the conversation he’s been having.
“You were great,” I say.
“You thought so?”
“I did,” I answer sincerely.
“You look tired,” he says.
“Why, thank you. And you do, too.”
He laughs. “These things take it out of me.”
“So you’re off,” I say. “To Paris.”
“For better or for worse.”
“I’m guessing for better.”
He shrugs.
“Are you excited?”
He looks like he’s weighing his options, deciding how much of the truth to tell. “I’m ready for a change of scene. It’s been a hard fall,” he says finally.
“No kidding.” I pause. “Why didn’t you just tell me you didn’t want to see me?”
“Tonight?”
“All month.”
He appears surprised. “I did want to see you.”
I raise my eyebrows. “I left a lot of messages,” I say. “I really needed some help. With all the Jewish stuff.” My eyes fill with tears. I blink, but they fill again.
“Didn’t I help you?” Eli asks. He leans in, genuinely concerned.
I’m silent.
He smiles, then his brow furrows. I can see he’s arriving at some kind of realization, but I don’t know what it is. I fiddle with my ring. “You should marry a Jewish girl,” I say. “So you don’t have a messed-up kid like me.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking,” he says. He pauses, realizing how his words sounded, and we both burst out laughing.
“Not that you’re messed up,” he says.
“Clearly not.”
“Clearly not at all.”
We laugh some more. Then his face grows serious. “I’m sorry, Alison,” he says. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more.”
And as he says this, it becomes clear to me for the second time: it wasn’t his job to help me in the first place. I don’t know how I missed seeing it earlier. There was nothing he could have done. A trip to synagogue together would have changed nothing.
/> “I’m jealous of what you have,” I say. “That’s what this all comes down to.”
“Had, you mean.” He’s referring to his disenchantment with the Judaism of his youth. But we both know that Judaism, in any of its forms, is there for him should he ever want it back.
“I’m angry about what’s happening to you,” he says. “I hope you know that.”
“I do.”
But another revelation makes itself known to me: he is angry at Judaism, but for reasons of his own. We’ve both been using each other. In the same way that he’s been a focus for my desire for Judaism, I’ve been a focus for his anger at it.
“You’re the perfect convert,” he says. “They should want you.”
I smile. “Yes. They should.”
He’s looking over my shoulder at the last group of people, chatting in the far corner of the basement. “Can you hang on a sec?” he asks. “I’m just going to say good night to my mum.”
“Your mother is here?”
“She is. Do you want to meet her?”
“Yes!”
Maybe it’s not too late, I think, picturing her arm around my shoulder as we light the Shabbos candles. But when we cross the room, she isn’t among the few remaining guests.
“I guess she went home,” he says.
This feels like the biggest loss of all.
We get up slowly, digging around in our bags for our mittens and scarves. Out on the street, more snow has fallen. Our boots squeak on the sidewalk. The street lights wear halos in the night.
“Oh,” Eli says, “I almost forgot. I brought you your Hanukkah gift.”
He looks me in the eye, a little nervous suddenly, and pulls a book from his bag. I recognize the title. It’s about a train that carried Jews to safety during the war, a topic very close to the one I’m writing about. “For your research,” he says.
“Wow,” I say. “Thanks.”
I give him a hard hug goodbye.
Eli flags me a cab, holds the door for me. I get in, give the cabbie my directions. At home, before going inside, back into my life with Degan, I stand on our porch in the cold and flip open the cover of the gift.
“For Alison, on your journey, and the light along the way,” Eli has written. “With love from one Jew to another.”
PART II
Black milk of morning we drink you at dusktime
we drink you at noontime and dawntime we drink you at night
we drink and drink
we scoop out a grave in the sky where it’s roomy to lie
—Paul Celan
The future is made of the same stuff as the present.
—Simone Weil
one
OLD HABITS DIE HARD. The Jewish calendar begins with Rosh Hashanah in September, but I can’t deny the secular New Year, the unblemished promise it holds. On the first day of January, I pack our station wagon with books, my journal, my tall winter boots. Driving toward the Allen Expressway, I note that the street lamps on Eglinton Avenue are adorned not with Christmas decorations but with tinselly menorahs. Several hours later I arrive at our family cabin to deep snow and the sound of the river down in the valley, carving its way through the darkness. Standing at the front door, I jiggle my key in the lock, above me a wild profusion of stars. Inside, I move through the rooms, turning on the baseboard heaters, electrical filaments crackling to life all around me. The cabin smells musty, like dust and mothballs. I build a fire and curl up on the couch in my sleeping bag, quiet and calm against the world. I’m reading the most beautiful novel about loss that echoes down the generations. I think of the breakfast tray I loved to bring to Granny when I was a girl, with a poached egg in a delicate porcelain egg cup and fingers of toast to dip in the runny yolk. I think of Granny’s mother, Marianne, whom I look so much like. Stuckerl—“piece of work.” Smiling into the camera in her old-fashioned bathing suit. She’s gone forever. I think of my father, to whom I can’t find the right thing to say.
When I was little, I prayed every night before bed. Mum or Dad would come to tuck me in. My prayers consisted primarily of a list of people we’d ask God to bless (“God bless Mummy, Daddy, Emily, Gumper, Granny, Lucy” and so on). This was followed by a singsongy leave-taking by my parents, a string of instructions blended into one long word: night-night-sleep-tight-don’t-let-the-bedbugs-bite-God-bless-see-you-in-the-morning!
God bless. See you in the morning.
I think of the faith in this message.
The last time I was home in Kitchener I tried to reinstate “God bless” with my family. I got up from the dinner table and said, “I’m bagged. Going to crawl into bed early. ’Night. God bless.”
“Good night,” they answered mildly, looking at me curiously for a half-second too long.
I tried it over several successive evenings and heard “Good night” and “Love you” but never “God bless” in return. The words have fallen out of fashion in our family, like crimped hair or bell-bottoms.
Tonight, when I’m done reading, I make my way down the cabin’s dim hallway and get into the big double bed. I pull the down comforter up to my chin. From the window I can hear the rush of the river, close by but invisible in the darkness. I fold my hands, close my eyes and try to pray. But I find myself unable to conjure up God, any God, even the God-in-everything that is normally so palpable in solitude.
It wasn’t Christ I prayed to as a girl: it was a vague idea of “God” as a man with a beard in the sky. But now I ask myself: what does the Jewish God look like? I strain for an image. All I can summon is my childish notion of the unshaven grandfather, only now he is also wearing a black hat and spectacles.
I recall a passage from the book I’ve been reading: “ ‘When a Jew prays, he is asking God a question that has no end.’ Darkness fell. Rain fell. I never asked: ‘What question?’ ”
I stop in to see my therapist Charlotte on my way home from the cabin three days later.
“How are you?” she asks.
“Tired.”
“Have you been sleeping?”
“More than usual.” I calculate the hours from the previous night: thirteen. And I could have gone longer.
There is nothing I like better than sleep: not TV, not chocolate. What does it mean that I instinctively group sleep with mindlessness, with escape? In sleep there is a remove that I find endlessly appealing, a chance at oblivion that renews itself daily, like this winter’s never-ending snow.
Sleep nourishes, sure, but it also absolves, removing the demands of the daily, the duties and tasks, and the pesky need to exist.
I tell this to Charlotte.
No response. Only rocking.
I quote to her from the late American poet Jane Kenyon:
Often I go to bed as soon after dinner
as seems adult
(I mean I try to wait for dark)
in order to push away
from the massive pain in sleep’s
frail wicker coracle.
“ ‘Coracle,’ ” Charlotte says, lingering on the word.
“I think it’s some kind of boat.”
“Yes. There’s an echo of Moses in the bulrushes there.”
The radiator clunks like a ghost in chains.
Charlotte purses her lips. “Maybe you’re sleeping so much because you have a lot of dreaming to do,” she says.
I stare blankly.
“Your dreams are helping you work out your relationship to your ancestors. To your great-grandmother Marianne. A relationship that’s too painful to hold with your conscious mind.”
“We celebrated Hanukkah,” I tell Charlotte, trying to change the subject.
“ ‘We’?”
“Degan and I. My sister. My parents.”
“That sounds significant. Was it healing?” she asks.
I nod my assent. But as I do, the opposite feeling asserts itself, that there is no healing possible. How have I not realized this before?
I’m quiet, gnawing my lip.
&nb
sp; “What are you thinking?” Charlotte asks.
“I’ll never heal it. Will I?”
She cocks a thin eyebrow.
“I’ve been lunging after all things Jewish,” I say. “People, classes, rituals. Thinking that the cure for the Holocaust lies in the practice of the religion itself. That by finding my way back there, I can somehow save Marianne. But there is no cure for the Holocaust. Is there?”
Charlotte looks at me. “No,” she says. “There isn’t.” And then: “I’ve been waiting for you to make this distinction.”
I grip the chair’s wooden arms, suddenly fuzzy-headed, dizzy. “What distinction?”
She peers at me over her glasses, then speaks slowly, enunciating her syllables: “The distinction between the Holocaust and Judaism.”
The idea that sleep is a psychic defence is hardly new, but I’m struck still by its immediacy, the way my eyelids begin to droop at the first hint that a conversation may turn controversial, that someone is about to say something I might find difficult. “Did you hear what I just said?” Charlotte asks.
She uncrosses her stockinged legs, crosses them in the opposite direction. I shake my head: no.
She hesitates, uncertain whether to reiterate. She believes I have to come to the big revelations myself. But she does speak, and when she does, I can barely hear her words for the scream of the static behind my eyes.
“You cannot save your murdered relatives,” Charlotte says. “No matter how Jewish you become, they are never coming back.”
two
WHEN I ARRIVE BACK at the apartment, a big stack of mail is waiting for me on the hall table. I tear open a cream envelope to find the outline for our upcoming Jewish Information Course. Degan and I read it over, aghast. Not only is there a three-hour class every week, there are tests and a final exam. Hundreds of pages of reading. “You really want to do this?” he asks.
Faced with the schedule, my resolve is only sharpened, my desire to convert strengthened. I feel a pure, unclouded kind of knowing.