Are You Alone on Purpose?

Table of Contents

 

“You know you'll still beat me,” Alison said after a pause.

“Even though I'm a cripple?” He said it again, on purpose this time, experimenting. He hadn't choked, had he? She still looked scared. “Huh?”

“Yes.”

He looked at her. He waited. The silence lengthened.

“Even though you're a cripple,” she said finally. “Is that what you wanted me to say? Well, are you happy?”

He
was
happy. Harry was suddenly, gloriously, irrationally happy. “Yeah,” he said. “I'll beat you. But that doesn't matter. It's not about winning.” He spun around, heading closer to the basket. “Come on. I'll show you some moves. You're probably not as bad as you think you are. Attitude is real important in sports, and, to be frank, Queen Nerd, yours sucks. We can work on that.”

After a minute, dazed, Alison followed Harry.

SPEAK

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First published in the United States of America by Houghton Mifflin, 1994
Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2007

Copyright © Nancy Werlin, 1994

All rights reserved
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HOUGHTON MIFFLIN EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Werlin, Nancy.
Are you alone on purpose? / Nancy Werlin.
p. cm.

ISBN : 978-1-101-57740-0

[1. Jews—Fiction. 2. Physically handicapped—Fiction. 3. Autism—Fiction.
4. Family life—Fiction. 5. Twins—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.W4713 Ar 1994 93-37653
[Fic]—dc20 CIP AC

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

M
any good friends and family members read this book, chapter by chapter, as I wrote it. When I got stuck or discouraged, they were always there with love, faith, and encouragement. My thanks to Elaine Werlin, Arnold Werlin, Miriam Werlin Rosenblatt, Max Romotsky, Victoria M. Lord, Barbara Hillers, Ellis O'Donnell, Gail Schulman, Jayne Yaffe, Anneke Kierstead, Juan Collas, Heather D. Atterbury, and J. Hannah Orden.

I'd also like to thank my mentor, the author Athena V. Lord, and my editor, Laura Hornik, for reading my first draft and seeing—and explaining to me—what the book could become.

L
ater, Alison Shandling believed that she'd never have thought twice about Harry Roth—except to avoid him—if her father's great-uncle Simon hadn't died just when he did. Her father's brother, Dennis, called in the middle of dinner with the news of Simon's death, and Alison watched her father listen to it, watched his shoulders sag and then straighten. If you believed in fate, and Alison did, then with hindsight it was clear that this was the first event in some capricious cosmic conspiracy to upset her life, which she kept in precarious balance as it was.

Not to mention Harry Roth's life, about which, at the time, Alison knew next to nothing and cared even less.

But Alison did care about her family, and she didn't know things were about to change. And when her father came back to the table, all four Shandlings sat quietly for a moment. Even Alison's twin brother, Adam.

“How old was Uncle Simon?” asked Alison's mother, finally.

“Ninety-three.” Alison's father shook his head. “I don't know why I'm shocked . . . . I haven't seen him since he showed up all on his own to see me get my Ph.D. Remember?”

“Like yesterday,” said Mrs. Shandling. “I was pregnant, so your uncle and I were about equally mobile.” She paused, her forehead wrinkling. “Jake, do you want to fly out to San Francisco tomorrow for the funeral?” She glanced at Adam. “I can manage here . . . .”

“Dennis will go. But I don't see how I can,” said Professor Shandling. “Joe Chin is scheduled to take his orals tomorrow. The date's been set for months.”

Alison knew that was that. Her father took his teaching responsibilities seriously.

Alison's mother nodded. “You'll have to go say Kaddish for Uncle Simon tomorrow, instead.”

“Yes.” The professor half grimaced. “Betsy? Where's the synagogue in this town, anyway?”

Mrs. Shandling laughed. “You're asking me?”

Alison's father was grinning back at his wife ruefully when Alison asked, “What's Kaddish?”

There was a pause. Into it, Adam began a tuneless humming, keeping time with the low beat of his fork against his plate. Feeling her parents' eyes on her, Alison glanced at her brother, but, for once, her parents were focusing on Alison instead of him.

And Alison didn't like it.

Then her father pushed his plate of scallops away. “It's the Jewish prayer for the dead,” he said. There was an odd note in his voice. Disapproval? She felt a little panicky. Professor Shandling never criticized Alison. Why should he? Alison was normal. She was not a problem.

She looked at him, and then at her mother. They looked back at her, their faces very still. “Well, I didn't know,” she said quickly. “You always tell me to ask when I don't know something.” She ate a scallop. “So I did.”

For a few seconds, Alison could actually feel the heaviness of the silence in the kitchen. She glanced at her mother to try to gauge how angry or upset she was. Mrs. Shandling didn't get upset very often, and of course it was usually Adam—or something connected to Adam—that made her pace up and down and scream and cry. It was hardly ever Alison. Alison had been making sure of that for as long as she could remember.

Then her mother spoke. “Jake?” said Mrs. Shandling. Alison relaxed at her tone; it was thoughtful rather than agitated. “Maybe we should actually join a synagogue. The kids could go to Hebrew school, too. Even Adam. It's not too late.”

And, from that moment, Alison's fate—and possibly Harry Roth's, as well—had been sealed.

 

The next Saturday the Shandlings began attending Sabbath services at Temple Ben Ezra. For Alison, the service consisted of two and a half hours of standing up and sitting down when everyone else did, and listening. A lot. Worst were the parts of the service that were in Hebrew. Alison had not realized that her parents read Hebrew.

Adam actually seemed to be having a good time. He hummed along with the singing and the chanting. And he loved the davening; he rocked away in perfect rhythm beside his father. That was a good moment, a rare moment. Alison caught her mother's eye, and they both smiled. It was incredible. All the men, swaying back and forth, muttering prayers under their breath, while Adam rocked right along with them. How wonderful for him, to suddenly find everybody else doing exactly what he did.

But Alison's amusement had faded by the time Rabbi Roth was three minutes into his sermon. Something about Jeremiah and the nuances of word order in biblical Hebrew. You had to consider grammatical subtleties, said Rabbi Roth, and pay close attention to underlying structure. You should cross-reference your conclusions with those of Talmudic scholars, he said.

Alison began counting the yarmulkes on the men's heads. On this side, fourteen white, forty-six black, and two funky crocheted ones. On the other side, starting from the front row, three white, and Harry Roth, bareheaded.

Harry Roth, from Alison's eighth-grade class, and from elementary school and countless playgrounds before that. Here. After a moment, Alison's mind began working. Rabbi Roth. Harry Roth. Of course.

Harry Roth, school bully. Rabbi's son. It was actually quite a good joke.

Rabbi Roth droned on.

“Pssst. Alison. Take this.” Startled, Alison turned toward her father and, automatically, reached across her mother to take what he was offering. A Shandling Sphere. She turned the colorful little globe in her hands. On her father's other side, Adam was already working on one.

“It's not appropriate, Jake,” Alison's mother whispered urgently. “This is a synagogue.”

“The kids are dying of boredom,” the professor whispered back. “So am I. Pompous windbag.”

“But we wanted to do this!”

“In theory, yes. In practice . . .”

Alison tuned them out. She looked down at the Sphere and, comparing colors and shapes in her head, began trying to work its puzzle pieces into alignment. You needed to concentrate to do the Sphere. And if she concentrated, Alison wouldn't think about Harry.

Not that Harry mattered. Alison would simply keep out of his way here, just as she did in school.

The problem, of course, was that Adam was here too, and he made Alison feel very conspicuous, as if she were nine or ten instead of nearly fourteen, as if she were transported back to the time when she'd been in constant danger of having to defend her brother from other kids, nasty kids like Harry Roth.

She had hated Adam then.

 

The following Saturday's service was a repeat of the first, complete with Shandling Spheres during the sermon. This time, Alison accepted the Sphere from her father with reluctance. At breakfast, Alison's mother had said that it wasn't right. People would be watching, disapproving. But Professor Shandling had said that other people, such as his wife, could listen to the sermon if they pleased. He and his children would exercise their minds constructively. “Right, Alison?” he had said.

“Right, Dad,” Alison had replied, dutifully.

Looking around now, she saw that several people were indeed watching, including Felicia Goren. Felicia was twisting in her seat, staring. Like Harry Roth, Felicia was in Alison's eighth-grade class, but Alison didn't really know her except by reputation. Alison mostly hung around with Paulina de Silva.

Felicia hung out with Harry's crowd.

Harry was up front again. Somehow, even his back looked bored. Alison supposed his father insisted that he sit up there. He was shifting a little in his chair. Alison's fingers twisted on the Sphere. She was too old for this; she really was. She wanted to give the Sphere back to her father, but he'd made such a big deal over it that she didn't dare. It would have focused attention on her.