Certain Girls

by Jennifer Weiner

  Jessica opened her prayer book the wrong way and stared at it in confusion.

  “Here,” I said, showing her. “Like this.”

  “Oh, yeah. Thanks,” she whispered as Tyler, who’d been sitting like a ventriloquist’s dummy in a tall wooden chair next to the ark that held the Torahs, looking like he was going to throw up or pass out or both, got to his feet and made his way unsteadily across the stage. He wore a dark blue suit and a blue-and-silver tie, with a blue satin yarmulke clipped to the top of his frizzy mop of curls. When he leaned in to the microphone, it squealed like it was afraid of him. Laughter rippled through the crowd. The rabbi bent down, murmured something in Tyler’s ear, and adjusted the microphone. Tyler fiddled with his bobby pin. I saw his throat working as he swallowed and started again.

  “Please turn to page sixty-three and join me in reading responsibly,” he squeaked. More laughter bubbled up. His Adam’s apple bobbed again. “Responsively,” he said, and launched into the Ashrei.

  I opened my book and chanted along, figuring it was good practice, as we did the v’ah hafta. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your strength, with all your mind, with all your being. Jessica didn’t even bother trying to read the transliterated Hebrew or the English. An entire paragraph before Tyler was done, she closed her book and started whispering urgently to the girl on her other side. I caught the word “Zach” a lot.

  Tyler wobbled through the blessings—the prayer saying that there was only one God, the prayer of mourning for the dead, the prayers, the rabbi told us (a little sternly—I figured he could hear the whispers and giggles from where he was) that Jews around the world were reciting this Shabbat, as Jews, throughout their long, sad history of persecution and displacement, had chanted every Shabbat. That shut Jessica up.

  The congregation held its breath as the rabbi lifted the Torah—a five-hundred-year-old parchment that, he explained, had been destined for a Nazi museum to a dead religion. After Germany’s liberation, that Torah, and dozens of others, were rescued by British soldiers, then restored, then sent to congregations around the world. The rabbi’s arms trembled as he lifted the parchment, wrapped around two heavy wooden scrolls, up over his head. “This is the word of God, passed down to us from Moses on Mount Sinai . . .” The rabbi set down the Torah. Everyone exhaled. Tyler cleared his throat, touched his tallis to the parchment, then raised it to his lips and kissed it to show his reverence for the word of God. His voice cracked as he began to laboriously chant the Hebrew words of the week’s portion from the book of Numbers. I followed along, wincing as Tyler stumbled through the syllables, silently promising myself that I’d do better.

  Beside me, Jessica flipped her Pentateuch shut. She reached into her purse, opened her cell phone (it had a leopard-print, rhinestone-studded case) to look at the time, then pulled out a water bottle. She spun off the cap, lifted the bottle to her lips and sipped, then passed it to me. A sweet, eye-watering smell filled the air. “Peach schnapps,” she whispered. “Want some?”

  Adventure, I reminded myself, thinking of Duncan’s raggedy khakis, the curve of his chin in the flickering light from the train window, the feeling of the sun on my bare shoulders as I’d crossed the parking lot. I lifted the bottle to my lips and took a tiny sip, then braced myself, expecting the stuff to burn going down, but all it did was tingle a little. It actually tasted delicious.

  “Thanks,” I said, and handed the bottle back.

  “No prob,” Jessica whispered, sliding the bottle back into her purse.

  I leaned back against the padded seat and fumbled with my prayer book. Tyler finished chanting and bent low to kiss the Torah again. Then his parents, my cousin Bonnie, and her husband, Bob, climbed onto the stage to stand on either side of him. Bonnie looked like she was going to cry as she said, “Tyler, my oldest son, your father and I are so proud of you today.” She pulled him against her, crushing his face against her bosom. Tyler’s bobby pin gave up the fight, and his yarmulke slid to the floor.

  Jessica snorted. I giggled, then blushed when an old lady at the end of our row turned sideways and glared at us. Standing between his parents, with his sister, Ruthie, next to him, Tyler smiled and seemed to be breathing normally. I shut my prayer book and watched him while the rabbi talked and his mother sniffled and the kids along my row whispered. The girls’ skirts rustled over their knees, the boys fiddled with their ties, and I thought, Who would be up on the bimah with me? My mother and father, but what about Bruce? If Grandma Ann got to say a blessing over the Torah, what about Grandma Audrey? And how was I going to convince my mom that if I wore the kind of dress she liked, I would be the laughingstock of Philadelphia?

  Jessica reached into her purse again, and when she offered me her water bottle, I didn’t even hesitate.

  • • •

  In the country club down the street from the synagogue, the walls glowed in the sunshine that came streaming through the skylights, and the voices of two hundred well-dressed guests and about twenty little kids bounced and echoed off the floors. Behind a waist-high countertop made of ice were the sushi chefs Jessica had promised, slicing fish and wrapping rice and setting the finished products on smaller blocks of ice that had been carved to spell out my cousin’s name. There was a man in a chef’s hat tossing pasta, and another one filling pancakes with Peking duck. There was an authentic New York City hot-dog cart in one corner and, on the table right next to it, paper cones of Belgian frites lined up on a metal rack with six different kinds of mayonnaise to dip them in. Waiters in white shirts and black ties offered bite-size hamburgers, miniature Reubens, lamb chops, and little phyllo-dough bundles full of what the waiter said was mushroom duxelles.

  I saw Tyler standing behind a table draped in fringed blue velvet, next to a braided loaf of challah for the motzi, the blessing over bread. I watched him looking proud and relieved and a little sweaty, accepting kisses and congratulations.

  The boys who’d been sitting in our row during the service climbed up to the balcony to flick mints from commemorative TYLER tins at the servers who were setting the tables down below. Jessica gathered up the girls, beckoned to me, and walked over to the bar.

  “What can I get you ladies?” the bartender asked.

  “Daiquiris for everyone.” Jessica grinned. “Make them doubles.”

  “Funny girl,” the bartender said, and poured frothy white liquid out of a pitcher into the empty blenders lined up in front of him. I hated banana. I would have picked any other flavor. The menu said there was peach, and raspberry, and lemon-lime . . .

  Too late. Jessica handed me a drink with a chunk of pineapple stuck to the rim of the glass and a piece of banana skewered on a toothpick, floating inside. “Step two,” she said. We followed her around a corner into an empty hallway, where she pulled a bottle, this one flat and glass, out of her purse. She looked around to be sure we were alone, then poured some of the brown liquid into each of our glasses. “Cheers!”

  I clinked my glass and held my breath and took a sip, which was all I needed to decide that I liked the peach schnapps a lot better than a banana daiquiri. The other girls twirled their straws and clustered together, their black and dark brown and dark blue strapless dresses making them look like a funeral bouquet. I took another sip and put down my glass and plucked a miniature hamburger off a platter. I ate it slowly and drifted toward the corner, toward Tyler.

  When the burger was gone, I wiped my fingers on a dark blue paper napkin with Tyler’s name engraved in rabbi-hair silver on the corner and made my way to the table. “Hi, Tyler.”

  He looked at me blankly. Up on the bimah, when he’d said Today I am a man, Jessica had crossed her skinny legs and said, “Doubt it,” but looking at him now, in his dark blue suit, I wondered whether it was true, whether he actually had changed.

  “It’s Joy,” I reminded him.

  “Oh, hi. Sorry. You look different.”

  I smoothed my dress. “You did really great.”


  His cheeks turned pink. “I screwed up my haftorah.”

  “I couldn’t tell,” I lied.

  Tyler was already looking past me, over my shoulder, where the next guests were waiting. “It’s going to be an awesome party,” he said. I sidled back to my corner and watched him standing between his parents, with his face crushed into his mother’s bosom every time she hugged him, and his father’s hands gripping his shoulders, until the lights flashed on and off and the waiters walked through the room ringing bells, telling us it was time to go inside.

  • • •

  It took my eyes a minute to adjust to the darkness of the ballroom, where thirty tables draped in silver and blue stood in rows, filling the room. Each one had a towering centerpiece made of different sports equipment, which made no sense: As far as I knew, Tyler hated all sports equally, except for professional wrestling. I stared up at the centerpiece at the kids’ table: a dozen footballs and a Jets jersey with Tyler’s name suspended in the air. How had they gotten the shirt to float? Was it strung up on invisible thread? Stuffed full of balloons?

  I sank into my seat between Jessica and another girl. “Enjoying the refreshments?” Jessica asked, smiling as she handed me another daiquiri—strawberry this time. I took a gulp, letting the icy sweetness melt over my tongue, as a waiter set a plate in front of me: sushi, and a tiny salad topped with candied nuts, and something baked in puff pastry.

  Jessica looked down at her food unhappily. “I totally should have gone for the hot dogs,” she said. “Why are the appetizers always better at these things?” She poked the puff pastry. “What is this?”

  “Um . . .” I took a nibble. “Quiche, maybe?”

  “It’s a savory goat-cheese tart with garlic coulis and frizzled leeks,” said the girl on my other side, whose curly hair was sticking up on top of her head.

  “Frizzled leeks,” Jessica repeated, her face wrinkled in disgust. She poked at her plate again. The other girl took a bite. She was wearing a dress with puffy sleeves and a blue satin sash.

  “She kind of looks like a frizzled leek,” I said to Jessica. I’d meant to say it softly, but I saw the girl with the curly hair turn her face away.

  Jessica laughed. “Frizzled leek!” she said.

  I bent my head over my plate. My lunch swam in my vision, and for a minute there were two goat-cheese tarts. Okay, so it was mean, I thought. At least I hadn’t said she looked like garlic coulis.

  I made myself sip a glass of water. The waiters cleared our plates. Jessica grabbed my daiquiri glass and sneaked it under the table, and when it reappeared, it was brimming again. “Drink up,” she said, and raised her straw to her lips. The lights went out, and an instant later, the music from Rocky blared through the building so loudly that our silverware trembled and the floor shook. In a circle of dazzling blue light, Tyler emerged, held aloft on—I blinked, and yes, it was true. My cousin was being carried into his bar mitzvah reception on the shoulders of actual real-life Jets cheerleaders. Four of them carried him, and the other eight whisked their silvery pom-poms and smiled their bright white smiles. “Come on!” Jessica screamed in my ear, and she grabbed my hand and pulled me up out of my seat and onto the dance floor.

  • • •

  The party started at one and lasted for hours. There were line dances and the limbo and Tyler Trivia, where kids won sweatshirts and CDs and gift certificates. I remembered a raspberry-peach daiquiri that I gulped down during the endless candlelighting ceremony (“I never met you, and we would have had fun / so in memory of Grandpa Hyman and Grandma Marcia, I’ll light candle number one”), and a banana-pineapple daiquiri that I drank while the bar mitzvah boy danced with his mother. I danced with two boys named Jack and three boys named Noah and even with the elusive Zach. After I noticed that my head had started to feel too heavy for my neck, and that my hands didn’t feel like they belonged on my arms at all, I told Jessica I had to pee, and we slipped out of the strobe-lit, booming ballroom into the cool, dim lobby. I hustled her past my grandmother (“Joy! Honey!” she said, waving, but I knew I couldn’t risk talking to her until I’d eaten a box or two of personalized Tyler breath mints). At last we escaped into the deliciously chilly, pale pink ladies’ lounge. “Best . . . party . . . ever!” Jessica hiccupped, slamming the door of her stall. The door bounced back open, which made her laugh, and it took the two of us three tries to get the door shut.

  I slipped off my shoes and leaned my cheek against the cool metal stall door. My face was flushed, my head was pounding, and my mouth, in spite of everything I’d had to drink, was dry as straw.

  “Hey, did you see the chaperones in the coatroom?” Jessica called. “You know why they’re there?” She hiccupped again. “Because at Ainsley Kiernan’s bat mitzvah, one of the girls was, like, giving a guy a blow job in the rabbi’s study, and her parents found out, so now the temple makes everyone have chaperones.”

  “Ew,” I said. It sounded like a scene out of Big Girls Don’t Cry. I flushed the toilet, walked to the sink, splashed water on my hot face, smoothed on some lip gloss, and had just stepped into the lobby when I saw Emily pulling Bruce toward the front doors and heard her say my name.

  “Party!” Jessica whooped.

  “I’ll meet you in there,” I said. As soon as she was gone, I crept through the emptied room after Emily and Bruce, ducking down behind the melting, half-dismantled sushi bar so I could hear them talk.

  “. . . didn’t even know she was coming.”

  I held my breath and slid down so that I was entirely hidden by the soy-sauce-splattered tablecloth. Peeking through a gap between the tables, I could see Emily and Bruce standing by the wall. She had her tiny hands balled on her hips. He was slouching away from her, eyes on the floor, looking like a boy who’d thrown his baseball through a window.

  “Maybe she just forgot to tell me.”

  “Maybe her mother forgot to tell you,” Emily said.

  “Well, what’s the big deal?” Bruce asked. His normally high voice was even higher than usual, and he was blinking faster than ever. “She’s here, there’s a place for her at the table. What’s the problem?”

  “The problem,” Emily squeaked, turning on one heel, “is that this is embarrassing to me. Do you think I enjoy this? Your family staring at her, staring at me? Aunt Lillian telling everyone, ‘Oh, and that’s Bruce’s daughter from his previous relationship’?” She raised her voice to an old-lady warble. “‘No, no, not another wife, just a girlfriend. She’s a—what did they used to call it?—a love child.’ With Candace. You remember. That book?”

  I cringed back against the wall, feeling dizzy and sick. I’d been so busy being embarrassed by my mother that it had never occurred to me that I could be a source of someone else’s shame.

  “That book,” Emily said bitterly. “And what about Max and Leo?” I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling my heart clench, thinking of how stupid I’d been when we’d been walking together, the five of us, and I was imagining that this was what it must feel like to be part of a normal family.

  Bruce tugged at his tie. “I’m not happy about this, either,” he said quietly. “I know you’re uncomfortable, and I’m sorry.”

  “Uncomfortable!” Emily squawked.

  “She’s my daughter,” Bruce said. “She’s got as much right to be here as anybody.”

  That’s right, I thought, my head throbbing, the daiquiris rising up in my throat. That’s right, you tell her!

  “But I’m sorry,” he said, and reached for Emily’s shoulders. “I know this doesn’t put you in a great position.”

  Emily turned her face away. “I wish . . .” My head was pounding harder than ever, and I felt my lips trembling. I couldn’t hear or see what else she said, but I could take a guess. I wish she wasn’t here. I wish she’d never been born. Crouched behind a dripping block of ice that smelled like fish, I wished for the same thing.

  I waited a minute. Then I stood up, steadying myself with one hand on the softened ice. Even in ba
llet flats, I was taller than Emily. “Excuse me,” I called. She and Bruce turned as I walked toward them, their bodies flying apart. Emily cringed. Bruce blinked triple-time. “I want to apologize,” I said in what I thought was a perfect high, breezy Amber Gross voice. “For ruining your day.”

  Emily’s face was horrified. “Oh, honey, I didn’t mean—”

  “Obviously, you didn’t want me.” I was looking at her, but I was talking to both of them, and I was sure that Bruce knew I was talking about more than just today, more than just his cousin’s kid’s bar mitzvah.

  “Of course we want you,” Bruce said. “We—”

  I cut him off. “I have to go now. My mom’s here,” I said, and turned and snatched my backpack off the coat hook where I’d hung it. I pushed the doors open and stood for a minute, dazzled by the sunlight.

  They both came after me. I ignored them, which was easy to do once I’d slipped my hearing aids out with tears clouding my vision. Keep moving, keep moving, I chanted in my head, and I started walking fast across the parking lot, Amber’s ballet flats slapping the pavement, sunshine sparkling off the windshields. Bruce called my name, but I just kept going, as if I’d find my mother’s blue minivan idling at the curb. At that minute, I thought I would have given anything if she had been waiting there, if she’d taken me into her arms and said, Never mind him and never mind her and never mind what I wrote. Of course I wanted you, I wanted you more than anything.

  I kept my head high and didn’t turn around even though I could hear Bruce calling my name. Probably they’re glad I’m going, I thought, and brushed a tear off my cheek. Probably now they’ll have fun.