Aviva told Mimi Slavitt again that it was getting late and that she had to get started on dinner.
“Yes, it is getting late, isn’t it?” Mimi responded. “Come on, darling, time to go home,” she said, turning toward her son.
But Danny just sat there, his eyes never leaving his book. He was picking his nose again.
“Stop that! How many times do I have to tell you not to do that?” his mother said, taking hold of his arm. “It’s time to go!” But Danny ignored her and continued to read his book. Mimi turned to Aviva and with a fretful smile said, “Danny is really looking forward to Howard’s big day.”
She bent down to pull her son off the sidewalk. He was small for his age, but it took considerable effort for his mother to get him up. His sneakers were dirty and there was a hole in the knee of his pants. Finally Mimi managed to get her son upright and began leading him down the street. For a moment his face was totally eclipsed by his book, making him look like something out of a painting by Magritte.
One week the class homework assignment was for everyone to write an essay about the happiest day of their lives, and when the teacher asked for volunteers to read their essays out loud, Howard raised his hand. This was the first time in the entire year—indeed, in his entire life—that Howard had ever raised his hand in class; usually he sat in the back of the room, hoping that if he crouched down low enough and avoided making eye contact with the teacher, she wouldn’t see him. But today he stood up in front of the class and read his essay. He enunciated every word in a clear voice.
“The happiest day of my life is scheduled to take place in two weeks and three days from tomorrow. Because that’s the day I’m going to be bar mitzvahed!” he exclaimed. He told about the party. There was going to be a magician who could bend metal rods with his mind. There would be freeze dancing, scavenger hunts and relay races. His mother had hired a man who was listed in The Guinness Book of World Records for making more balloon animals per minute than anyone else in the world. He told about the party favors, which would include digital cameras for every kid and T-shirts with howard’s bar mitzvah written in neon letters across the front. At the end of the party there was going to be a raffle and the winner would receive a free iPod. He concluded by reporting that the whole thing was going to cost his parents thirty thousand dollars.
Howard was feeling so happy that afternoon that instead of seeking sanctuary in the nurse’s office during lunch, as he usually did, he ate in the cafeteria, and afterward he made his way into the schoolyard for recess. All the other kids were huddled together in groups, and Howard stood by the fence, wondering what to do with himself. He was beginning to feel a headache coming on when he noticed Steve Hartman walking toward him.
Steve was the most popular boy in the seventh grade; the girls wrote his name on the palms of their hands and the boys imitated everything he said and did. When Howard saw him coming toward him, he jerked back in fright: it was Steve Hartman who had dubbed him Howard the Coward.
“Chill, man!” Steve commanded.
Howard looked up at him. How he longed to be back in the nurse’s office, lying on her torn plastic couch, a thermometer in his mouth, an ice pack on his head.
“I told you, chill,” Steve said, patting him amiably on the back, which made Howard jerk away in terror.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have any money today,” Howard said.
“I don’t want money. Me and my people want to go to your barmizza.”
“You want to come to my bar mitzvah?” Howard asked.
“Ain’t that what I just said?”
“Should I ask my mother to send you an invitation?” Howard asked tentatively.
“Yeah. Cool,” Steve said. Howard ran all the way home from school. “Could I invite Steve Hartman and his people to my bar mitzvah?” he asked his mother as soon as he stepped through the door. Aviva had come home early from work that afternoon to go over some last-minute preparations with the caterer and the florist.
“Slow down, Howard. I can’t understand a word you’re saying,” she said.
“I can’t slow down! I’m too excited!”
“I want you to take three deep breaths. Then you can tell me what you have to say.”
After quickly inhaling and exhaling three times, Howard repeated, “Could I invite Steve Hartman and his people to my bar mitzvah, could I? Could I, please?”
“Who’s Steve Hartman?” asked Aviva. Howard had always been too ashamed to tell his mother about his persecution at the hands of the charismatic leader, and he was happy now that he hadn’t. “And who are ‘his people’? That sounds black. Is he black?”
“No, Mommy. He’s the captain of the hockey team and he’s my new friend,” Howard told her. “He asked me to play basketball with him and his people during recess today. I wasn’t very good at it but he told me not to stress it! Could I invite him and his people to my bar mitzvah? Please, please, can they come?”
“Of course,” Aviva said.
“I can’t believe it. Steve Hartman wants to come to my bar mitzvah!”
“And why shouldn’t he?” asked Aviva.
After she had helped Howard with his homework and reviewed his haftorah with him, Aviva took her calligraphy set out of her desk drawer and addressed invitations to Steve Hartman and his friends. She would have to order another table and tell the caterer to make enough food for six more people. And she would have to buy six more cameras and maybe add another iPod to the drawing. Now there would parties for Howard to go to and things for him to do on the weekends, instead of moping around the house all the time.
Suddenly the specter of Danny Slavitt rose up before her. If only she could just disinvite him. Aviva was so preoccupied with the problem that she overcooked the string beans and burned the rice. After dinner, when she was in the middle of scrubbing the broiling pan, an idea occurred to her.
She found Danny Slavitt’s name in the school directory and picked up the phone and dialed. She hoped his mother wouldn’t be home so that she could just make her case to the answering machine. But Mimi Slavitt answered the phone on the second ring.
“Hello, this is Aviva Brodner, Howard Brodner’s mother,” Aviva said. “I’m calling about Howard’s bar mitzvah.”
“Oh yes,” Mimi said. “Next Saturday at eleven, right? Nine thirty for the synagogue and eleven for the reception, right? It was so nice of you to invite Danny. Didn’t you get our RSVP? I sent it to you at least a month ago. I’m sure I sent it to you.”
Aviva wished she had just hung up when she heard Mimi Slavitt’s voice. She could have waited to call tomorrow during work hours. She had heard Danny Slavitt’s mother was a copyeditor or something. But now that she had gotten herself into this situation, she had no choice but to press on.
“Yes, we did get your RSVP. But I’m calling about something else.”
“Is something wrong?” Mimi asked.
Aviva hesitated.
“No, no, not at all. It’s just that … The thing is,” she started, “I thought it would be only fair to warn you that Steve Hartman and his crowd will be coming to Howard’s bar mitzvah.” She paused, giving Mimi time to draw her own conclusions.
“Oh yes, I know all about Steve Hartman,” Mimi said.
“Yes, well, I just thought it would be only fair to warn you,” Aviva said, pausing again.
“Thank you,” Mimi said.
“Howard tells me they’re not very nice to Danny.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she said. “Danny couldn’t care less about those little pricks.”
“I just thought it would be only fair to warn you,” Aviva said, repeating herself. “That he’s coming. To Howard’s bar mitzvah.”
“That’s very considerate of you,” Mimi said. “But again, Danny doesn’t give a shit about them. And he really loves parties. I don’t know why exactly,�
� she said, and after a brief pause that was punctuated with a little laugh, she continued.
“I mean, all he ever does is find himself a corner somewhere and read one of his atlases or field guides. Thanks, anyway, for the warning. But really, you don’t have to worry about Danny. He’ll be fine. He always is.”
Aviva slammed the phone down into its cradle so hard that the crystal paperweight on her desk came crashing down to the floor, splitting into hundreds of pieces. She wept as she got out the broom and began to sweep up the tiny shards of glass.
Howard, who had just come to the kitchen to see when dinner would be ready, asked his mother what was wrong.
“Nothing, honey. Mommy’s just being a big baby, because she broke her favorite paperweight. Don’t come in here. I don’t want you stepping on glass.”
“Mommy,” Howard said, “I’m so excited about my bar mitzvah, I can’t do my homework. Am I really going to sit at the head of a big table—like a man? In the middle of it?”
“Yes, Howard,” Aviva said, holding back her tears as she swept the glass into the dustpan. “It’s called a dais. You’ll be sitting at the head of the dais.”
“And where will your table be, Mommy? Will I be able to see you from where I’ll be sitting at my dé … dé … dé…?”
“Dais, honey,” Aviva said, hiding her disappointment that her son couldn’t pronounce this simple two-syllable word. “And yes, Howard, I’ll be sitting with the grown-ups—right next to your big table,” she said, the solution to the Danny Slavitt problem dawning on her. It was simple: The reception was going to be held in the basement of the synagogue in a room that was separated by a big dance floor. She could put Danny and his mother on the other side of the room, along with Howard’s tutor and his wife, the women from the sisterhood she had felt obliged to invite, and her husband’s relatives. Shortly after she and Howard had run into Danny and his mother on the street, Mimi Slavitt had called her up to explain that Danny could not yet go places on his own. It was something they were working on, so Aviva had invited her to accompany her son. If only for once in her life she didn’t have to be so fucking polite, then she wouldn’t be in this predicament now.
Howard woke up at five o’clock in the morning, the day of his bar mitzvah, to the strange sight of both the sun and the moon hovering in the early morning sky. When Aviva came into the kitchen to fix breakfast, he was sitting at the table in his bar mitzvah suit.
“Don’t you look just like a man?” she said. “But maybe you should take the suit off. We don’t want to get it dirty when you eat breakfast.”
“I’m too excited to eat, Mommy.”
“But you need your strength. You have a big day ahead of you—”
“The biggest day of my life!!”
“Yes, honey, and you need your strength.”
“Okay, Mommy. I guess you’re right,” Howard said and he went into his room and took off his suit, carefully zipping it back into its plastic bag.
When they got to the synagogue, Howard was thrilled to see his name spelled out in big black letters on a billboard outside. His father videotaped him clowning around in front of the sign, pointing at it and then himself and then back at it again. Aviva had arranged for the tutor to meet them and she walked up to the podium with Howard and had him practice reading the transliterated text aloud one last time while she went downstairs to make sure everything was in order with the preparations for the reception.
Howard recited his haftorah without making a single mistake. Afterward he stood and listened while Rabbi Gluck addressed him. “Howard,” the rabbi said, “in the Torah portion you read this morning, the words ‘Be strong and of good courage’ are repeated four different times. The first three times the words are spoken, God tells Joshua that he must bring the people into the land. The fourth time the words ‘Be strong and of good courage’ are repeated, the people say them to Joshua.” Placing his hands on Howard’s shoulders, the rabbi continued, “What I want to tell you, Howard, as you stand here beside me on the podium, before all your friends and family, is that you have proven yourself to be, like Joshua, ‘strong and of good courage.’ I know that your family and all your honored guests join me now in wishing you a great big mazel tov!”
Next it was Aviva and her husband’s turn to speak. Addressing Howard, they took turns telling him how proud he had made them. “You really hit the ball out of the park with this one, son,” his father said. Aviva stood beside him, tears of pride in her eyes, nearly struck speechless with joy. “I’m so proud of you, Howard. All I can say is today you are a man!”
It was Howard’s turn to speak. Resuming his place behind the podium, he said in a voice that to Aviva’s ears seemed deeper and richer: “Friends, family, members of the congregation of Temple Emanuel, Rabbi Gluck, I want to thank you all for sharing the most important day of my life with me. I feel like I’m in a dream. The only reason I know it’s real is that when I pinch myself, it hurts!” At which point he pinched his arm and winced. The congregation chortled appreciatively. “I want to thank everyone who has helped make this day possible. Rabbi Gluck, my tutor Jeff Kessler, and my parents. I know this is going to be the best bar mitzvah ever!”
Aviva made her way down the back stairs behind the podium to tell the caterer it was time to start serving the hors d’oeuvres while Howard stood with his father, shaking hands with the guests, accepting their congratulations and their gifts. Downstairs, the reception room had been transformed into a Hawaiian luau. The dais where Howard and his new friends would sit was draped in a grass skirt, and at all the place settings were Hawaiian shirts and neon sunglasses and luau hats—bucket hats for Howard’s girl cousins and luau baseball hats for his boy cousins and for Steve Hartman and his followers. There were silk flower arrangements on all the tables, and the room was lit up with neon lanterns that were hung from the ceiling with neon strings. On the dance floor, Barry the balloon man was making a flamingo out of a red balloon. Everything looked even better than Aviva had imagined it would, and standing between two cardboard coconut palm trees, she punched the air and murmured out loud to herself, “I did it! I did it! I did it!” It felt so good to be able to breathe again. Taking one long last look at the room, she went into the kitchen to give instructions to the caterer. When she returned, the guests were already swarming down the stairs. Soon she was surrounded by her friends.
“Did you notice?” Aviva said. “He didn’t make a single mistake. Not one single mistake.”
“And that speech!” declared her best friend Babs Landau.
“He wrote it all by himself. I didn’t help him with a word of it. Not a single word! And did you hear how clear his voice was? How clear and strong?” Aviva said.
“Clear and strong as a bell,” said her first cousin Barbie Stern.
“So it wasn’t my imagination, was it?” Aviva said. Then excusing herself, she went off to find Howard. It was time for him to make the brucha over the challah and the wine. She found him standing next to the life-size cutout of himself in the doorway and two giant bamboo torches. He was surrounded by Steve Hartman and his friends, who were all high-fiving him. There was a look of rapture on his face.
After Howard said the prayer over the challah, Aviva went back into the kitchen to tell the caterer it was time to serve lunch. When she returned to the reception room, she could sense right away that something was wrong. She scanned the room, looking for Howard as she announced that it was time for everyone to take their seats, and soon she spotted him running across the room toward her. He was crying.
“M-m-m-mommy, Mommy,” he stammered.
“What is it, honey?” Aviva asked.
“M-m-m-m-ommy,” he repeated.
“Take three deep breaths, Howard,” she said in a firm, steady voice.
“I-I-I-I-I-I c-c-c-c-c-an’t!!!!!!!!”
“Just tell me what happened, darling.”
&n
bsp; “D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-n-n-n-n-n-eeeeeeeeeeee Sla-sla-sla-sla-sla-sla-sla-sla-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-it, he, h-h-he s-s-s-said—” But he was too overcome with emotion to continue.
Aviva wiped the tears off his cheek with the blue silk scarf she wore around her shoulders. “What happened, Howard? Please tell me what happened.”
“D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-neeeeeeee Sla-sla-sla-sla-sla-sla-sla-sla-v-v-v-v-v-it, he, h-h—he s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-ss-s-s-s-said, he, h-h-h-he s-s-s-said th-th-that I’m n-n-not a m-m-m-m-m-m-man!!! B-b-b-b-e-e-e-c-c-c-c-ause I-I-I’m n-n-n-n-ot eigh-eigh-eigh-teen!”
“What? What? What did he say?” Aviva asked.
“H-h-h-h-he said th-th-that I-I-I-I’m n-n-n-n-n-n-ot a m-m-m-m-m-m-an. That I-I d-d-d-d-on’t look a day over t-t-t-en!!!”
Aviva held her son’s chin and staring into his eyes, she said, “You are not going to let Danny Slavitt spoil your special day. Do you understand me, Howard? You will not let him spoil your special day. You are a man. You are a proud Jewish man and no one can tell you anything different. You sit down now in this chair and wait for me,” she said, signaling to her friend Babs to stay with Howard until she got back. “I’ll just be a few minutes, Howard,” she told him, and with that, she went off in search of her husband.
Frank buried his face in his hands as his wife commanded him to tell Mimi Slavitt and her son Danny to leave. Not daring to lodge any protest, he followed her obediently as she walked him over to No Man’s Land to point out Danny Slavitt, who was busy pulling apart the lei that hung around his neck, while his long-suffering mother tried to stop him.
Aviva watched as Frank approached Mimi Slavitt. He stood before her with his hands thrust in his pockets and an apologetic grin on his face and told her that he was sorry, but he would have to ask her and Danny to leave.
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