Authors: Michael Rubens
Sons of the 613
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Clarion Books
215 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10003
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Copyright © 2012 by Michael Rubens
All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
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Clarion Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Rubens, Mike.
Sons of the 613 / Mike Rubens.
p. cm.
Summary: Isaac is struggling to prepare for his Bar Mitzvah when his older brother Josh, a self-proclaimed “Super Jew” and undefeated wrestler, forces him into a quest to become a man by shooting a gun, riding a motorcycle, falling in love, and more.
ISBN 978-0-547-61216-4 (hardcover)
[1. Coming of ageâFiction. 2. BrothersâFiction. 3. JewsâMinnesotaâFiction. 4. Bar mitzvahâFiction. 5. Junior high schoolsâFiction. 6. SchoolsâFiction. 7. Family lifeâMinnesotaâFiction. 8. MinnesotaâFiction.] I. Title. II. Title: Sons of the six one three.
PZ7.R8295Son 2012
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2011044352
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eISBN 978-0-544-08044-7
v1.0912
PrologueFor My Parents
The Tragic Events At Temple Israel Set The Stage For My Own Inevitable Doom
“Today, I am a man.”
Right then I knew that something was seriously wrongâI mean
seriously
wrongâwith Eric Weinberg. Everyone in the audience knew. You couldn't miss it.
It wasn't just the anxious, weebly quaver of his voice, the nasal soprano of which didn't do much to support Eric's assertion of manhood. His skinny face, which was pale and pasty even in midsummer, had suddenly gone several notches whiterâbeyond white, really, achieving a sort of ghostly translucence, and all the way from the seventh row of Temple Israel I could see the greasy sheen of sweat on his beaky nose and the trembling of his birdlike hands.
Even Rabbi Abramovitzâa man who must have witnessed the very worst of tragic bar and bat mitzvah flameoutsâlooked concerned. This was more than a standard attack of the jitters.
The rabbi had a famously rebellious left eyeball that tended to move and blink independently of the right one, which explains how an otherwise nice man can end up with a nickname like the Lizard. Now, though, his rebel eye was taking a break from its standard Pong-like wanderings to cooperate with its rival. Both pupils were riveted on Eric, who had started to sway gently behind the podium.
“Oh, shit!” muttered my older brother, Josh, next to me. Then he grunted, probably from an elbow in the ribs from our mom.
I glanced at Josh. His muscly jaw was clenched, lips pressed together. He was trying not to
laugh.
This was
funny
to him. My friend Ericâwell, maybe not
friend,
but at the least, ally of convenience in a hostile universeâwas going to pieces up there, and Josh was staring at the back of the pew in front of us, eyes bugging out as he tried to maintain his composure.
On the stage, Eric was doing his best to continue, his reedy little voice coming from what seemed like very far away. I couldn't even look at him. He was giving off palpable waves of intensely contagious Panic, and my Panic immune system is extremely weak. My own skin was clammy. I pinched my thigh, hard, to distract myself from the terror bubbling and churning inside me.
I leaned forward to see past Josh's bulk, vainly hoping for some reassuring guidance from my parents. My mom didn't notice me. Her attention was focused on the disaster unfolding on the stage. She was employing one of her superpowers, the Smile: a fixed expression as placid and pleasant and unperturbed as a mirrored pond, capable of hiding even the most monstrous emotions.
Next to her was my nine-old-sister, Lisa. She had yet to master the mysteries of the Smile and was staring at the stage with undisguised eyes-wide, mouth-open horror.
Just past her, our dad was shaking his head subtly. He sighedâsomething I saw rather than heard, because by now my ears were filled with a dull roar. I'd seen our dad make the same gesture of weary resignation once before: when we'd all gone out to his favorite fancy restaurant for his birthday, and a fat businessman collapsed at a nearby table and my dad the doctor knew he had to abandon his perfect steak to go treat him.
I didn't want to look, but some irresistible force drew my eyes back to the stage. Rabbi Abramovitz had somehow managed to shepherd Eric to the Torah-reading portion of the ceremony and was holding the pointer for him, indicating lines on the scroll.
But Eric wasn't reading. He wasn't even looking at the Torah. He was standing there silently, his sunken zombie eyes fixed on something visible only to him, located somewhere behind and above all our heads.
“Baruch . . .”
suggested the rabbi, gently prompting him.
Nothing. It was a horrible silent momentâsheer endless vacuum. No one even breathed. I wanted to scream or run or stab myself or do anything to end the pain, and I was furious at Eric for making me feel this way. Next to me, Josh was shaking with trapped mirth.
“Baruch ata .
.
 .”
Rabbi Abramovitz prompted again.
Eric's mouth stayed shut. From somewhere deep inside him came a sound like a sped-up foghorn played in reverse.
Josh was bent double, both hands clapped over his mouth.
“Baruch ata adonai,”
said the rabbi.
“Blaarrrgh!”
Eric responded, and spouted a thick stream of vomit in a bold arc over the podium.
The following then happened in rapid-fire 1-2-3 order: the dull, soupy
schplat
of Eric's breakfast hitting the carpeted steps; the unmistakable wet sound of an earlier meal exiting from his other end into his tighty-whities and cheap suit pants; and a two-part
thud-thud
as the bar mitzvah boy hit the deck, out cold.
Chaos. People leaping to their feet, screaming. The rabbi throwing himself over the Torah like a Secret Service agent protecting the president. My dad was already pushing past me to go render aid. My mom was covering my sister's eyes. Josh was standing, repeating “Hoooh, shit! Hooooh,
shit!
” in joyful disbelief.
It all swirled around me, people jostling me left and right, but I sat there, numb, expressionless, already in shock, my impending and inevitable doom now clear to me.
And then Josh, as if reading my mind, clapped a thick hand on my shoulder and said with a huge grin, “Guess what, Isaacâin three weeks, that's going to be you up there.”
IN WHICH MY GUILT AND FEAR TORMENT ME AND VERY UNWELCOME NEWS IS DELIVERED
Guilt and fear are gnawing at the very core of my being. I'm in terrible, terrible trouble, and it's my fault, and the news my mother has just given me makes everything far, far worse.
“Josh will take care of us?!”
She must be kidding.
“Yes,” says my mother. “Don't look at me that way! Your father and I have spoken with him. It will be fine.”
I continue to stare at my mother in disbelief for several seconds. She's not kidding.
“Josh?” I finally manage.
“Yes.”
“Will take care of us?”
“Yes!”
“Josh?!”
“Yes!”
“You think that will be âfine'?”
“Yes!”
It's a Power Yes, delivered with a backward-leaning wind-up and emphatic forward thrust of the head, as if she's catapulting the conversation-ending-response at me. She holds the position, eyes wide, gaze boring into mine, searching for signs of unwise resistance. I zag.
“Dad!”
“Isaac, your father and I have alreadyâ”
“Dad!”
My father, his profile to me, holds up a distracted finger from across the room. I hear him saying something about blood gases into the phone.
“Isaac,” says my mother, “I told you, we've discussed it already. Here, wash this.” She shoves a potato into my hands.
“Butâ”
“Wash!”
I wash, gnawing on my lips, barely noticing what I'm doing. It's early evening, Thursday, not quite a week after the tragic events at Temple Israel. We're all in the kitchen. My mother is at the center island, chopping vegetables for soup. My father is ten feet away, wandering in a random pattern by the dining table as he nods into the phone, on a call now for thirty minutes discussing a patient. From the old radio on the counter come the opening bars of
All Things Considered,
blending with the comforting sounds of the neighborhoodâa lawn mower humming on a distant lawn, birds singing, Lisa and her friends playing in the backyard, similar sounds repeated from lawn after lawn after lawn in a safe cocoon that extends for miles in every direction, everyone inside and outside that cocoon unaware that my parents have gone insane.
My father is going to Italy in two days for a conference. He'll be there for two full weeks. And now, my mother casually informs me, she will be joining him, because the organizers have suddenly thrown in a free ticket for her and what a fabulous opportunity and how could she miss it? But it will be fine, you see, because Josh will take care of us. It's insane. They're insane.
“Insane!” I mutter.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Boom.
The house shudders. It's from the basement. Josh.
I still haven't recovered from Eric's bar mitzvah. When I'm awake I want to be asleep, just to escape the angst that eats away at my guts all day, but when I do manage to sleepânot an easy thing for me in generalâI dream that it's me up there onstage, except I'm naked but for my semi-Jewfro and I can't remember anything and I'm totally unprepared. Which isn't that far from the truth. Hence the fear and guilt. What I need now is support and comfort and stability, not to hear that both my parents will be gone for two weeks at this critical juncture and that Josh will take care of us and it will be fine.
I scrub the potato, sweating, formulating strategies.
BOOM.
Boom boom
BOOM.
“What about renal failure?” my dad is saying into the receiver. “You know, maybe I should stick around.”
A ray of light. “Yeah, maybe Dad should stick around,” I second hopefully.
“He is
not
sticking around. It's been planned for a year, and he's speaking, and they're paying him, and he's not backing out now,” she says, raising her voice to direct the last part of the sentence at him. He flaps a hand at her in exasperation.
“Well, why do you have to go?”
“Isaac . . .”
“Why-eee?”
Even I can hear the drawn-out, two-toned, childish whininess in my voice, but I don't care.