Miriam is generally quiet and a little strange, a good roommate in the sense that she is tidy and doesn’t smoke. Miriam doesn’t offer much, but she doesn’t ask for much either. Martha can handle that. She’s got her own life, a.k.a. Jerome, and hasn’t got time for distractions.
But now Miriam’s got a funny expression on her face. One Martha has never seen before.
“Are you okay?” Martha asks, even though she’s pretty sure she doesn’t want to know.
“It’s odd, don’t you think? Verbally, I mean. Is dead. Are dead.” Miriam says this as if returning to a conversation already in progress. Martha is used to this, generally nods or makes
uh-huh
noises while doing whatever it was she was doing before. But this time Miriam’s got that face.
“Did something happen?” Martha asks, actually turning in her chair. Miriam is sitting on Martha’s bed, picking at Martha’s favorite blanket, which is pilled from years of use. Martha hates it when Miriam does this and has told her so on several occasions.
Miriam has grown very pale as, funny expression on her face, she continues to de-pill.
“My parents,” Miriam says. The right corner of Miriam’s mouth is twitching as if being frantically tugged by an invisible wire.
“God, Miriam, what’s happened?” Martha, who is good-natured at heart, rushes to the bed and puts her hand on Miriam’s shoulder, an action which causes Miriam to flinch and jolt from Martha’s bed to her own.
“They
were
walking alongside the road, they
were
hit by a car, and now they
are
dead. It doesn’t work. Are is present tense. Dead is — well, dead is
past,
isn’t it? Present tense modifying past; being modifying nonbeing. Language, in this instance” — and here Miriam makes a garbled noise in her throat — “fails.”
Martha grabs for tissues but Miriam isn’t crying. Her face looks as if it has imploded.
“Is there anything I can do?” says Martha, who has never seen or spoken to Miriam’s parents, who doesn’t even know their names.
“There’s nothing anyone can do,” Miriam replies flatly. “Time has run out.”
Miriam wonders if the car had on its headlights, if the driver had tried to swerve. Perhaps the driver hadn’t seen them at all, too blinded by the projected course of his own life. Miriam realizes that, by holding fast to her version of the future, she has sentenced her parents to die under the misapprehension that they were alone in the world. Miriam’s punishment, she realizes, is to live knowing that she truly is.
The funeral confirms this. Miriam’s parents were both only children, their own parents long dead. In making final arrangements, Miriam scrutinizes address books, letters, and the odd forgotten photo in search of a cousin or a great-aunt, anyone in whom she might find a vague familial affiliation. It is as she feared it would be. Though the service is well attended by Mel and Ruth’s fellow scions of society, for whom this funeral is a must-attend event, Miriam’s is the only hand for this assemblage of buffed and manicured nails to shake.
At first it is difficult for Saul to be in the room. The air is supersaturated with anxiety, leaving the taste of metal on his tongue. He is reminded of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his only son, wonders how he can possibly subject his child to this. Onstage, rows of nervous children flutter like leaves before an approaching storm. Saul finds himself holding his breath with every completed word, waiting to see if one more will be blown away. Without thinking about it, he claps harder for the losers, his palms stinging from repeated apology.
He wishes he could see Eliza but her number puts her in a back row, obscured by other children’s heads. When he sees her stand up for the first time, he finds himself standing as well, barely able to stop himself from approaching the stage. As he sits down a mother beside him gives a sympathetic smile. “It gets easier,” she says.
He knows she knows
PROPAGATE
, can even remember going over the word with her weeks before. He releases his breath in a grateful sigh.
Disappointed by the brevity of Elly’s applause, he continues to clap until a father turns to stare. “That’s my daughter,” he explains, his voice stiff with pride.
“That was an easy word.” The man shrugs, turning back to the stage. Saul can’t help but grin when the man’s son, a bucktoothed boy with home-cut bangs, gets dinged out on
MANICOTTI
.
By the third round, Saul has managed to relax. The tension of the room has become a persistent odor his nose has ceased to smell. His formerly passionate applause for the losers has become polite.
His mind drifts as other parents’ children take to the microphone. He peruses the spelling bee program as if it is a mail order catalog. He skips past pages of faces and their accompanying blurbs: the girl who won a trophy for her essay on fire prevention, the boy who helps his father care for orphaned calves. He finds Eliza’s photo and tries to pretend she is someone else’s child. Hers is a school photo complete with mottled, soft-focus background, her smile an obliging show of teeth. Thick eyebrows draw attention to the face, but the eyes, nose, and mouth could be Any Jew. They are features which, rather than blossoming into something beautiful, will look very much the same in years to come.
Saul is so engrossed in the future life of this imagined stranger that he fails to watch his daughter spell her third word correctly,
GHERKIN
clearing her entry into tomorrow’s spelling finals.
Leaving the park, Aaron feels he is being lit by an invisible spotlight, the kind only sensed by those who have broken through the bounds of daily existence into the realm of the Significant. He knows he has just played a part in something larger than anything in his life before. Though he didn’t know it then, the airplane, the bar mitzvah, the church, and his covert research were all preparation for meeting Chali, a meeting that had it occurred any sooner, would have been meaningless. Aaron recalls Siddhartha’s first journey from his father’s palace, the one that compelled him to forsake his sheltered Brahmin life and become the Buddha. Even as he shies away from such lofty comparisons, Aaron cannot help but pen a line for The Life and Times of Aaron Naumann:
And when Aaron was sixteen he had a chance encounter that was to forever alter the course of his life.
Chali has given Aaron words for his quest. God consciousness is just what Aaron has been seeking from airplane wing onward, not just a set of rituals but a living, breathing experience. Aaron was beginning to think such a thing was impossible. Ashamed of his spiritual hunger, he had been considering throwing in the God towel and resigning himself to Judaism. But now his perseverance has paid off. In their conversation and in the pamphlets Aaron received from Chali before they parted, Aaron has found what he is looking for.
It was such a simple sentence when Chali said it — “Come to the
ISKCON
temple on Sunday and see for yourself” — but back in Aaron’s room the words become large and sharp. His father’s face stares in disapproval from between the letters. Dad and Elly will be back by Sunday. Aaron will have to come up with an excuse to free him from dinner. He will invent a friend, an invitation to pizza and a movie. It doesn’t stray far from the truth. Though they have just met, Chali feels like a better friend than most.
Aaron’s friendships up to this point have been circumstantial, fellow targets and picked-lasts banding together for safety’s sake. Conversations have been confined to sanctioned topics: sports, girls, television, school. Any slight departure from this limited docket could open up the potential for further singling out, a risk that none of them, already at the bottom rung of the social ladder, dared take. When Aaron was younger, a friend was anyone he played with at recess, a good friend anyone with whom he also shared his lunch. Only recently has Aaron realized that he knows as little about the remaindered boys he calls friends as they know about him. The years they have known each other have buttressed, rather than eased, their conversational boundaries. Rules established long ago have become the fabric of the friendships themselves. Aaron cannot imagine asking the religious views of Marvin, a compulsive reader of fantasy paperbacks featuring beasts and busty virgins on their covers. Or Steven, who brushes his teeth after every meal and wears his headgear in school, if he’s ever felt God. He knows too well what would happen should he interrupt a cafeteria comparison of
NBA
coaching styles with a question about meditation — the silence, the strange looks, the unspoken excitement that one of their number had opened himself up for attack. Though the benefits of Aaron’s membership in this group are limited to a regular lunch table and someone with whom to split a bucket of popcorn at the next
Superman
sequel, it is better than complete lonerdom, that lowest caste forced to scramble for unoccupied cafeteria seats, suffering the slings and arrows of the other diners. It is better than having to see a movie alone. Aaron had comforted himself with the idea that college would offer the opportunity for an improved him to gain a new set of friends. A year and a half didn’t seem that much longer to wait. Having met Chali, Aaron realizes that he may not have to wait at all.
It is the morning of the second and last day of competition. Eliza is one of sixty five spellers who will be returning to the stage. She is robotically sliding home fries into her mouth, her scrambled eggs untouched.
“Don’t forget to drink,” Saul says.
“I don’t want to have to pee when I’m onstage,” Eliza replies, taking a token sip of her orange juice. She feels vaguely ill. She has seen the engraved loving cup, bigger than her head. She has pictured herself holding the trophy aloft like a race car winner on “Wide World of Sports.” Last night she dreamed herself onto the TV news, waking to the sound of Walter Cronkite’s voice echoing in her head:
Eliza Naumann, this year’s national spelling champion. And that’s the way it is… .
She knows that winning involves luck, that
LUGE
can be followed by
XANTHOSIS
. She is suspicious of her father’s calm, of last night’s insistence that she finally satisfy her craving for
HBO
.
“Elly, try to eat. The world does not live on potatoes alone. You’re going to need energy. Are you nervous?”
Eliza nods.
“I’m not. You know why? Because I know we did our best. And I’m very, very proud of you.”
Eliza has to swallow a few times before she can get the words to come out of her throat.
“I want to win.”
Saul reaches across the table and takes her hand. “You know what, Elly? I think you can — ”
Eliza smiles so large and so fast her cheeks ache. She is about to regale him with her Cronkite dream when she realizes he has more to say.
“ — maybe not this year, because I don’t think we’ve done enough work. We only really focused on the dictionary. But the fact that you’re here and that you’ve done so well proves to me that you’re ready for the next stage. I’ve got a whole year to help you understand what I mean by getting to know the letters, to help you feel comfortable letting the letters guide you. I think by next year there’s a chance you’ll be unstoppable.”
“Oh,” Eliza says, the wind knocked out of her.
“Hey, are you okay?”
Eliza nods, pushes her plate away.
“Elly, sweetie, you look like you’re about to cry.”
Eliza shakes her head, forcing the taste of tears from her throat. Her mind is looping the sound of her father’s voice when she shut herself inside the bathroom after
GEGENSCHEIN
.
All I’m asking is that you try.
If she had only listened, if she hadn’t insisted on going to bed like a baby, they might have studied last night instead of watching “Comic Relief.” Her father might be saying something different now. She might not be feeling as if, after all his time and effort, she has failed him.
“I’m sorry.” She knows, even as she says it, that the words change nothing.
“Eliza, there is absolutely nothing to be sorry for. You are doing a super job — I mean, this is the national bee! The finals! Whether you win or not just isn’t that important, not this year. Try to forget what I said. I’m the one who should apologize. I shouldn’t have brought up any of that getting-to-know-the-letters stuff yet. I got carried away. Since I waited this long to take the next step with you, I could have waited a little longer.”
Eliza knows her father knows this is her cue to ask what he means. Saul is looking at her expectantly, smiling his I’ve-got-a-secret smile. The sight of this smile in the past has left Eliza yearning to do or say anything to be let in on the secret too. Now it only makes her angry. For the first time, Eliza doesn’t want to play her father’s game. Instead of following the unspoken rules, she remains silent. She tries to put herself back into the frame of mind she occupied when she believed he thought she had a chance. But she can no longer picture Walter Cronkite saying her name, only hears her father’s voice saying,
That’s the way it is,
over and over again.
Aaron is setting the table for two. He briefly places his plate next to his mother’s but cannot imagine them eating in such proximity to each other. He returns his plate in its usual place.
It is the first Friday night in living memory that Aaron hasn’t entered the kitchen to find the Shabbat candlesticks resting on wax paper on the kitchen counter, their white candles waiting to be lit. It is traditionally the woman’s job to handle the candles, but it has always been Saul who retrieved the candlesticks and the wineglass, who made sure there was challah on the table. Aaron knows where everything is. He could defrost half a challah loaf, fill the kiddush cup with Manischewitz, and put the candles in their place, but he isn’t sure who he’d be doing it for. His actions certainly wouldn’t serve Miriam, who waves her hands over the candle flames but leaves Eliza to chant the blessing alone. None of his prospective religions employ candles, wine, or bread on Friday nights.
Miriam comes home just as Aaron is setting down silverware. He watches as she enters the kitchen to see if she notices anything strange, but Miriam don’t even glance at the space where the Shabbat candles should be. Aaron realizes that Shabbat’s occurrence or nonoccurrence tonight is completely up to him.