The Best American Short Stories 2013 (22 page)

II

It’s the next night, and the boy in Stratford again lies awake, listening. He doesn’t really believe he’ll hear his name, but he wants to be awake in case it happens. He doesn’t like to miss things. If he knows something important is coming, like a trip to the merry-go-round and the Whip at Pleasure Beach, he’ll wait for it minute by minute, day after day, as if by taking his attention away from it for even a second he might cause it not to happen. But this is different. He doesn’t know it’s going to happen. It probably won’t happen, how could it happen, but there’s a chance, who knows. What he really needs to figure out is how to answer, if his name is called. In the story, Samuel was told to answer “Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth.” He tries to imagine it: “Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth.” It sounds like a boy in a play. Better to say “Yes?,” which is what he’d say if his father called his name. But the Lord is not his father. The Lord is more powerful than his powerful father. He’s more like the policeman in front of the school on Barnum Avenue, with his dangerous stick hanging from his belt. Better to say “Yes, sir,” as he’d say if the policeman called his name. If he hears his name, that’s what he’ll say: “Yes, sir.” Don’t shout it: say it. Yes, sir. A voice in the dark, calling his name. The thought stirs him up again. He’s too old to be scared of the dark, but the fear still comes on him sometimes. He likes to play a scare-game with his sister, the way they did when he was four and she was two. She lies in her dark room pretending to be asleep and he whispers, “Booooo haunt moan. Booooo haunt moan.” Then they both burst into wild, scared laughter. But a voice in the night is not funny. He’s through with witches, ghosts, monsters, isn’t he, they’re not real, so why is he scaring himself with the story of Samuel? It’s only a story. His father has explained it to him: the Bible is stories. Like
Tootle
or
The Story of Dr. Dolittle
. Trains don’t leave the tracks to chase butterflies, the pushmi-pullyu with a head at each end isn’t an animal you’ll ever find in the zoo, and the Lord doesn’t call your name in the night. Stories are about things that don’t happen. They could happen, but they don’t. But they could. What if his name was called? He would want to be there. He’d want to know what comes next. What did the Lord say to Samuel? He can’t remember. The most important part, and he can’t remember. That’s one thing about him: he can’t remember the important things. He can remember the prince climbing the hair to the top of the tower but he can’t remember the capital of Connecticut. Is it Bridgeport? The library in Bridgeport has long stone steps and high pillars. It’s what he first thought of when he heard that Samuel was serving the Lord in the temple of Shiloh. A temple is different from a church. Jews go to temple and Christians go to church. But Catholics go to Catholic church. And everybody goes to the library. He’s getting tired. At the backyard hedge, Billy turned to him and said, “Do you believe in Jesus?” His eyes were hard. There’re two answers to that question. One is “No.” The other’s what his father said to him: “Jesus was a great teacher.” But he was a coward and looked down. A door opens and he hears footsteps in the hall. Do his parents know he’s lying awake, listening for his name? He hears the door to the bathroom open and close. Sometimes his father is up in the night. If he opens his door and waits for his father? Tell me about Samuel. Tell me. Tell me about the voice in the night. If you heard that voice, nothing would ever be the same. He pushes the thought away. Tomorrow they’re going to drive out past the Sikorsky plant to Short Beach, where he can wade out to the sandbar.

III

One-fifty-four in the morning. The gods are out to get him. Sleep for an hour, wake for no reason, stare like a madman, waiting for sleep. Dragging himself through the day like a stepped-on snail. Won’t take a pill, they leave him groggy. Sloggy and boggy. That all you’ve got? Draggy and saggy. Baggy and shaggy. Like a hag, haggy. Now he’s alert, full of useless energy. In the old days he’d recite fistfuls of sonnets. My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun. Three things there be that prosper up apace. Now all he can do is lie there thinking about things, far-off things, high school, grade school, the boy in the room in Stratford, listening for the voice in the night. Did it really happen that way, or is he embellishing? Habit of the trade. But no, he lay there waiting for his name. The two windows, the two bookcases his father had made from orange crates, the bed against the other wall for his sister to sleep in when one of the grandmothers came to stay. One grandma from West 110th Street, one from Washington Heights. Father’s mother, mother’s mother, first one, then the other, never together. Waiting for the train at the Bridgeport station, with long dark benches and the row of hand-cranked picture machines. The something-scopes. Turning the handles, making the pictures move. The grandmother with crooked fingers who brought packs of playing cards and dyed her hair orange and wore lots of rattly bracelets, the grandmother with the accent who made cold red soup with sour cream. Mutoscopes. Two women born in the nineteenth century, who can grasp it, one in New York, one in Minsk, before skyscrapers, before horseless carriages, before the extinction of the dinosaurs. His own mother growing up with Russian Jewish parents on the Lower East Side. Her father escaping the tsar, embracing America, naming his first son Abraham, middle name Lincoln. Moving them to a new apartment every few months, skipping out on the rent. She said he sat reading Dostoyevsky in Russian while his sons waited on customers in the store. The Stratford boy’s own early childhood in Brooklyn, all there in the photo albums: pretty mother with flower in her hair on a bench in Prospect Park, pretty mother in wide-brimmed hat standing with little son in sailor suit on the Coney Island boardwalk. The two of them riding the trolley. Trolley tracks in the street, wires in the sky, the grooved wheel at the top of the trolley pole: a forgotten world. His invisible father holding up the light meter, adjusting the f-number, staring down into the ground-glass screen of the twin-lens reflex. Then Stratford, working-class neighborhood, where else can a professor afford to live. Milk delivered in glass bottles to the back porch each morning. Italians and Eastern Europeans, Zielski and Stoccatore and Saksa and Mancini. Riccio’s drugstore. Ciccarelli’s lot. Ralph Politano. Tommy Pavluvcik. Mario Recupido. What is a Jew? A Jew is someone who doesn’t cross himself in front of Holy Name Church. A Jew is someone who stays indoors practicing the piano on bright summer mornings while everyone else is outside playing baseball. His mother playing Chopin nocturnes and waltzes,
DEE
dah-dah-dah,
DEE
dah-dah-dah, teaching him scales, reading on the couch with her legs tucked under her. The mahogany bookcase by the staircase, the wall bookcase by the fireplace. His father driving them home one night: “Did you see that? Not a book in the house!” What is a Jew? A Jew is someone who has books in the house. His father demolishing an argument for the existence of God, his lips twisted in scorn. Jewish Community Center but no bar mitzvah. A tree every Christmas, a menorah once or twice. No baby Jesuses, no Marys or mangers. A package of matzo once a year: like big saltines. The strange word: unleavened. Dyeing Easter eggs, walking under the roof of cornstalks and branches at Sukkoth, biting into hollow crumbly chocolate bunnies, lighting the yahrzeit candle for the grandmother from Minsk. What is a Jew? A Jew is someone who thinks of Easter as a holiday celebrating rabbits. His mother a first-grade teacher, his father a teacher at the university. The grandmother with crooked fingers, once a piano teacher. The whole family teaching up a storm. A tutor who tooted the flute. Tried to tutor two tooters to toot. What is a Jew? A Jew is someone who comes from people who teach. Erleen, from the project in Bridgeport, watching gently over him each day when he came home from school. The rhyme in the street: Eenie meenie miney mo, catch a nigger by the toe. His father serious, quiet-voiced, his mouth tight: “People use that word, but not in this house. It is disgusting.” Negro: a word of respect. Respect people. His all-Jewish Cub Scout troop. “You don’t look for trouble,” the scoutmaster said. “But you don’t let anyone call you a kike.” Not in this house. A new word: kike. He tried to imagine it: kike. Hey, kike! Hit him, kill him. Did he really lie awake night after night, listening for his name? The child Samuel. All about obedience. Saul’s flaw: disobedience. Samuel thrusting his sword into the belly of the king of the Amalekites. That’s what happens when your name is called in the night. The righteous life, the life of moral ferocity. His father and Samuel, two of a kind. Samuel: “Thou art wicked.” His father: “You are ignorant.” A special sect: the Jewish atheist. The thirteenth tribe. And you? Who are you? I am the one whose name was not called in the night.

I

The voice calls again. This time Samuel doesn’t hesitate. He swings his legs out of bed and rushes through the dark to Eli’s side. “Here am I,” he cries, impatient now, “for thou didst call me.” Eli is lying on his back, his eyes closed, his hands crossed on his chest. All at once he’s leaning up on an elbow, searching Samuel’s face. Samuel feels aggrieved, anxious, expectant. What is happening? Something is happening. He doesn’t know what. The long hand of the priest rests on Samuel’s arm. Samuel suddenly understands two things: Eli did not call his name, and Eli knows who did. Does Samuel know? He almost knows. He knows and doesn’t dare to know. But Eli is speaking, Eli is telling him who it is that has called his name. It is the Lord. “Go, lie down: and it shall be, if he call thee, that thou shalt say, Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth.” The searching look, the hand on his arm: Samuel understands that he must ask no more questions. He returns to his bed and lies down on his back with his eyes open. He wants to hear with both ears. One hand is pressed against his chest. His heart is like a fist beating against the inside of the bone. What if his name isn’t called again? Eli said, “If he call thee.” Three times, and he failed to answer. Should he have known? He knew, he almost knew, he was about to know. Now he knows. What he doesn’t know is whether he will hear the voice again. If his name is not called, he will never forgive himself. And if his name is called? Then what? What should he say? Oh, don’t you remember? Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth. Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth. He remembers the first time he saw Eli, the high priest of the temple. A powerful man, with shining gems on the shoulders of his ephod. His legs were like tall columns of stone. His hands the size of oil jars. Now Eli’s beard is white, he mutters in his sleep. Difficult sons, wicked sons he cannot restrain. Calm yourself. Stop trembling. Listen.

II

The third night, and the boy in his bed in Stratford still hasn’t heard his name. He’s not really listening, is he? He thought he heard it once, a distant call, fooling him for a second, that cat cry or whatever it was. He no longer expects to hear anything, so why’s he still waiting? By now there’s a spirit of stubbornness in it: he’s waited this long, might as well wait some more. But that isn’t it. What’s
it
is, he doesn’t believe the voice in the night will come, but his unbelief upsets him as much as belief would, if he believed. If the voice doesn’t come, it means he hasn’t been chosen. He likes being chosen. He was chosen to represent his class in the school spelling bee. It’s easy to spell, he doesn’t know how to spell words wrong, but it still feels good to be chosen. He’s not so good on the playground, can’t kick the ball as hard as most of them, lucky if he gets to first. He wants the voice to call him in the night, even though it won’t happen. He doesn’t believe those old stories, doesn’t believe the prince climbing the hair or the thorns growing up and covering the castle, so why should he believe the story of the voice in the night? His father doesn’t believe those stories. His father doesn’t believe in God. But when the boy asked, his father didn’t get the angry look, he got the serious quiet look. He said you have to think about it yourself and make up your mind when you’re older. The boy wonders how old is older. When is when? If he hears the voice now, he’ll know. But he already knows. He knows he won’t hear the voice. Why should he be chosen? He’s no Samuel. He’s a good speller. He plays the piano with two hands, he can write a poem about George Washington and draw a picture of a kingfisher or a red-winged blackbird. But Samuel opens the doors to the temple when the sun comes up, Samuel fills the lamp with oil so that it burns all night. Down below he hears a car going by. It’s passing his yard and the vacant lot, the two bars of light sliding across the ceiling, now it’s passing the bakery down by the stream, he loves the bakery, smell of hot rye, the gingerbread men and the muffins with raisins, now it’s climbing the hill, sound of tires like the waterfall in the park earlier this summer, over the hill toward Bridgeport. He feels old, very old, older than Eli, he wishes he were young again, a child. He wishes he’d never heard that stupid story. Sh-h-h. Sleep now.

III

Another night, another waking. Not a good sign. Death by insomnia at sixty-eight. All Samuel’s fault, keeping everybody up when they ought to be snoring away. The boy in Stratford battling it out at the age of seven. By high school, no tolerance for the once-a-week churchgoers. Priest or atheist: choose one. The move to Fairfield, the beach, Protestant churches galore. Presbyterian, First Congregational, Episcopalian. Roper. Warren. Kane. No Jews allowed in the beach club. Who’d want to join a beach club? Reading the five arguments for the existence of God and their rebuttals. The ontological argument. The teleological argument. Walking along the beach at night, the deserted lifeguard stands, the lights of Long Island. Challenge to a friend: Why do you go to church? Why only on Sunday? He knew what he knew: always or never. If the voice calls your name, your other life is over. No going back. Short of that, sorry, please pass the ketchup. By the age of fifteen, done with religion, like the baseball books of his childhood. No regrets. Girls in tight skirts reaching up into lockers, girls in tight blouses hugging books to their chests as they hip-swing down the halls. Let me touch! Let me see! The house for sale on his friend’s street out near the junior high. “They’ll never sell to Jews.” “Why not?” “You know how those people are.” “How are they?” “They take over the neighborhood.” “You’re talking to one.” “Oh, you’re not
that
kind of Jew.” At age eleven, the talk with his father: “We don’t do anything in Sunday school. Just play games and fool around. I don’t want to go anymore.” His father taking his pipe out of his mouth, looking at him gravely: “You don’t have to go.” He’d expected resistance, a look of reproach. Might as well blame it all on Jehovah. Could have called his name in the night. The boy in Stratford, listening. Something extreme in his temperament, even then. Shy and extreme. Stubborn. You don’t call my name, I won’t call yours. Even Steven. Dr. Dolittle and Pecos Bill instead of Samuel and King Saul. Don’t have to go. The neighborhood goes to church, the family stays home and reads. In high school, asking his father whether he liked teaching. His father’s pause, his grave look, his utter attention: “If I were a millionaire, I would pay for the privilege of teaching.” The son knows he’s heard something important. He is moved, he is proud of his father, he’s envious. He thinks, I want to say that someday. They call it a calling. Samuel’s call in the night. His father’s calling. Lying awake remembering these things. Walking in his bathing suit, towel around his neck, to the beach in Fairfield with his parents’ friends from the city. Janey with her long black hair and tight white one-piece, waving her arm at the street of ranch houses: “Suburbia.” Her voice mocking, disdainful. New York judging Connecticut. Jews moving out of New York: abandoning the tribe. Always the connection to the city. The four years in Brooklyn, corner of Clinton and Joralemon, the grandmother on West 110th Street and the grandmother in Washington Heights, mother growing up on the Lower East Side, father on the Upper West Side. Childhood trips to the city, the stone bridges of the Merritt Parkway. The Museum of Natural History with dinosaur skeletons like gigantic fishbones, lunch at the Automat: the sandwiches behind the little glass windows. Horn & Hardart. Early admission to Oberlin, but he chooses Columbia. Walking along the eighth floor of John Jay Hall, the thrilling sound of violins and cellos behind closed doors: the good Jewish boys practicing their instruments. Weinstein, or was it Marinoff: “What kind of Jew are you?” A Jew from suburbia. A nothing Jew, a secular Jew, an unjewish Jew. A Jew without a bar mitzvah, a Jew without a bump in his nose. Later he develops the idea of the Negative Jew. A Negative Jew is a Jew about whom another Jew says, “You don’t
look
Jewish.” A Negative Jew is a Jew who says to another Jew, “Judaism is a superstition that I reject,” and to an anti-Semite, “I have Jewish blood.” A Negative Jew is a Jew who says, “I don’t believe in Judaism,” while being herded into a cattle car. Hitler, the great clarifier. His father’s German Jewish colleague, Dr. What’s-Her-Name, one of the first women admitted to a German university, her passion for Kant, for all things German. Stayed put till 1939. Blamed it all on the Polish Jews. “They gave us a bad name.” The boy in Stratford, lying awake at night. Hard to remember how it was. A game, was it? Scare yourself with witches, scare yourself with Jehovah. A shudder of delight. All those old stories, wonderful and terrible: the voice in the night, the parting of the Red Sea, Hansel in the cage, the children following the piper into the mountain.
Hamlet
and
Oedipus Rex
as pale reflections of the nightmare tales of childhood. Everything connected: David playing the harp for Saul, the boy in Stratford practicing the piano, the cellos and violins behind the closed doors. The boy listening for his name, the man waiting for the rush of inspiration. Where do you get your ideas? A voice in the night. When did you decide to become a writer? Three thousand years ago, in the temple of Shiloh.