by Hopen, David
Amir laughed. “You screwed up, Oliver. You know that?”
Oliver closed his eyes. “Eh.”
“Her father’s rolling in it,” Amir told me. “Made a fortune in biotech and now cryptocurrency. He’s on CNBC all the time.”
“Crypto, dot-com mania, Dutch tulips. It’s all speculative, if you ask me. Bubbles waiting to burst,” Oliver mumbled, half-asleep. “Nouveau riche shit. That’s not real money.” The Porsche zoomed in front of us, soaring into the falling rain. Noah revved his engine, lurching after it, snaking through traffic.
I rode with my cheeks against the window, staring out at the Florida sun shower, replaying the sight of those hyper-realistic faces against the sky.
* * *
THAT FIRST SHABBAT WAS QUIET. Over dinner we discussed the Parsha: “Shoftim opens by instructing us how to appoint the right king,” my father said, eyes closed, swaying slightly, using that singsong voice reserved for Torah study, “but why do we ask for a king in the first place?”
“To be like our neighbors,” my mother said, distributing gefilte fish. “To blend in with everyone else.”
My father brandished his pointer finger. “A great sin, forgetting who we are.”
After dinner, my father and I learned while my mother read on the couch, eyeing us with contentment. We woke at seven the next morning for minyan, being that my father insisted on praying early, while his mind was half-dreamy, while most other shul-goers were still asleep, and then we returned home for another silent meal. Following bentching we sang briefly—I hated Shabbat singing but hummed intermittently, out of some vague sense of duty—until my parents retreated drowsily to their bedroom for a nap, leaving me to read on the living room couch.
As a child, I suffered through a recurring dream. I stood at the mouth of a cave, rolling a boulder back and forth. Something about the sound of that boulder scraping the ground triggered a neuropathic inflammatory response: fever, cold sweats, nausea. I despised these dreams, feared their production of what I imagined to be some combination of physical and psychosomatic cytokines—small, confused proteins tasked with destroying an infection that neither my body nor mind knew to be quite real. But the most intolerable symptom was the sensation of being frozen in time. My movements blurred, my thoughts unspooled too slowly, all sounds adopted a sunken pitch. Even the mere recollection of these dreams, while sitting in Gemara shuir or riding my bike, was enough to dredge up that feeling of being paralyzed in time, leaving me pale and clammy.
The dreams, probably the result of prepubescent migraines, stopped in my early teens. And yet, throughout my adolescence, I often felt time resume that insufferable creep. My mother never fully understood what I meant: from her perspective, my progression from infant to brooding young adult had occurred too quickly, leaving her unprepared for her only child’s departure from her house. Shabbat was thus our shared antidote. For my mother, Shabbat suspended time, providing a moment to breathe, to reflect. For me, Shabbat restored equilibrium. We went to shul, we ate together, we sang and, for twenty-five structured hours, time resumed a more bearable pace. I grew up finding beauty in Shabbat for precisely the opposite reason that Eric Fromm and most Jews loved Shabbat: once a week, I had the chance not to overthrow time, but to slip happily back into its shackles.
After havdalah—my mother holding the candle above her head, my father dipping his fingertips into the wine, his pockets, behind his ears—I received the call. Oliver’s parents were in the Hamptons, which meant Oliver was throwing a party. Would I come? I agreed. Good, Noah said, they needed a designated driver. I was being used, but I was still flattered to have been invited. Besides, I reasoned, driving meant I wouldn’t have to fumble for an excuse to stay sober. It was foolproof.
I was changing when my father knocked. He looked me over, frowned. “Going somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“In that shirt?”
I’d replaced my white button-down with a navy polo. I craved color, had grown tired of snide black-and-white comments. “I’m just going to Oliver’s,” I said, shrugging, conjuring artificial nonchalance.
“Who?”
“Oliver Bellow.”
“The one from shachris the other day?”
“No. Different kid.”
“But the name sounds familiar.”
“Like the writer.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
He paused, snapped his fingers. “Bellow. It’s all over shul. Big donors.”
“Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Ba’alei chesed, then? They give a lot of tzedakah?”
“Sure.”
This calmed him. “I’m not used to you leaving so often.” I thought about my nights in Brooklyn: moping about my house, reading until my head ached, dozing early, on occasion attending a school oneg or, if we were feeling particularly adventurous, going for pizza in the attempt to spot Bais Yaakov girls. “But I trust you, Aryeh.” He nodded, smiling faintly. He kept nodding as he left my room.
* * *
SOMEHOW OLIVER’S HOUSE WAS EVEN more impressive than Noah’s: Victorian-style, high ceilings, a small fountain in the driveway. There were about a dozen cars outside, all parked at hazardous angles. Music swelled inside.
“His dad’s a big shot,” Amir explained as we walked in. “Would you believe he manufactures rocking chairs?”
“Rocking chairs?”
“Apparently they’re in super high demand in, like, Cyprus. He’s got some manufacturing monopoly there.”
The front door led into a living room with tremendous open space and floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto the pool. The furniture had been relocated, replaced by long folding tables to allow for chaotic games of beer pong. In the center stood a mountainous keg. There were at least sixty people in the house. It was oppressively hot and I was wild-eyed with fear. I’d braced for what I hoped would be, at worst, a party only marginally more intense than Niman’s, but this was another level. Too-loud music, pockets of rowdy friends congregating in the corner and dancing, glancing from the corner of their eyes, waiting to be joined.
“C’mon,” Amir said behind me. “Let’s find Oliver.”
We pushed our way into the kitchen—more precisely, Noah and Amir pushed, and I clung desperately behind them—where we found Oliver standing atop the marble kitchen counter in oversized sunglasses and a red, satiny bathrobe. “My boys!” He rushed toward us, nearly taking a nasty spill. Noah steadied him. “Noah,” he said. “Noah, here, here.” He handed him his bottle.
Noah gave a throaty laugh, put the bottle to his lips, passed it to Rebecca.
“You two,” Oliver said, pointing at Noah and Rebecca. “Drink, and I . . . I want you to go upstairs into my own room . . . no, on second thought, make that my brother’s room . . . lock the door, and make sweet, athletic babies, will you? Will you do that?” He wobbled about the countertop. “Will you let me adopt one?”
“Jesus.” Rebecca gestured at his robe. “He thinks he’s Hugh Hefner.”
“Jay Gatsby,” I said.
“What?”
“Gatsby.”
She shrugged. “Can’t hear you over the music,” she yelled, pointing apologetically to her ears. Noah grabbed her hand, gave me a wink and led her from the kitchen. Amir, I noticed from across the room, had already located Lily. I was alone.
I wandered helplessly, snaking through the crowd, ignoring stares, sidestepping dancing bodies and puddles of beer. Tassels from my tzitzit strings, I realized, hung out over my rear; I crammed my limp tail back into my pants, only to scold myself for feeling such embarrassment at being spotted wearing tzitzit. I found no one to speak to and, eventually, drifted up the grand, freshly waxed staircase. It was quieter on the second floor, a good ten degrees cooler, which did wonders for my throbbing headache. As I breathed in relief, leaning against the bannister and overlooking the crowd, I made out, of all things, piano notes. I paused to listen: the piece was prec
ise, confident, restrained. Slowly, I made my way in search of the music. I tried one door, bolted shut, frantic moans from within. As I floated down the hall the music changed, the notes becoming repetitive, louder, lower, that sense of calm giving way to frenzy. At the end of the hall I found a dim-lit study, door ajar. Careful not to make a sound, I pushed gently and peered through. At the center of the room sat Sophia, hunched before a grand piano, neck craned close to the keys, hair flying wildly from side to side. Her long fingers attacked the keyboard at unnatural angles, striking the same pattern over and over until, after a half-minute, she allowed her right hand to fall to her side so that her left, curled into itself, rested alone on the far side of the piano, pressing softly, discharging whispers.
I squeezed through the crack in the door. Sophia had her back to me, her body tense, regal. For a moment I thought she’d finished, until her right hand, limp at her waist, leaped violently at the keyboard. Her head swayed in hyper speed, her hands airborne, dancing savagely. I moved closer to see her face. Her eyes were shut.
The music stopped. She straightened, spotted me. A dazed blackness left her eyes. She looked as if she were recovering possession of her body.
“I’m really sorry,” I said, embarrassment flooding my face. “I heard music and just—”
She forced a breath, combed her fingers through her hair. “It’s all right.”
I examined her mouth, her eyes, her jaw. She looked at me without recognition, as if she were still lingering somewhere in the privacy of her music. “I—I didn’t mean to startle you,” I said.
“You seem to be the startled one.”
“What was that?” I asked, after a beat. “Did you make it up?”
“Not quite. That was something called Beethoven.”
“Name rings a bell.”
“Sonata 23 in F Minor, Appassionata, with a little twist.”
“Right, the Appassionata, was it? Thought it sounded familiar.”
She stretched her neck before returning her attention to me. “More literary than musical, are you?”
“Yeah,” I said, “that’s definitely fair to say.”
“Sit.” She ran her hands beside her on the bench. “Unless you prefer to hover awkwardly with your mouth agape.”
I sat. My left arm grazed her waist. A surge of physical intimacy rendered me temporarily light-headed. “You’re an incredible pianist.”
“How kind.”
“I’ve never heard anything like that before.”
“Have you heard any classical music before?”
“Well, no, not really,” I admitted. “But now I wish I did.”
“Most people don’t have much of an appreciation. Mr. Bellow lets me use this piano since nobody else touches it, which is just tragic. Gorgeous, isn’t it?”
To be polite, I placed my palm on the surface of the piano. “How long have you been playing?”
“Since I was four. When I asked for lessons my parents were ecstatic—wonderful for the well-rounded college applicant, right? They’ve grown less enthusiastic lately. Now they discourage it, in fact.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I’ve become too good.”
“That’s a bad thing?”
She turned to look directly at my face, eyes unflinching. “My parents want their daughter to be a doctor who, charmingly enough, plays piano at an Ivy, then exclusively at dinner parties to amaze the occasional guest. They’re less interested in raising a starving artist.”
“I see.”
“It’s created mild tension in the Winter household.” She closed the rack, folded her fingers over it. Her nails were painted white. “So, I’ve agreed to do both.”
“Both?”
“I won’t stop playing,” she said, “but I’ll go to med school.”
I resisted a sudden urge to admit I’d searched recently for her on Facebook. Pictures of her at a recital, at a family vacation in Aspen, at Rebecca’s sweet sixteen, at her brother’s bar mitzvah. Pictures of her offering imperturbable smiles, pictures of her wrapped around her parents, pictures of her looking off, candidly, into remote sunsets, oblivious to the fact that this moment would be preserved in the sarcophagus of the Internet and accessed one day by someone she met briefly at her friend’s boyfriend’s pool. Thinking about my unauthorized glimpse into some stratum of her inner life was momentarily destabilizing. “Impressive.”
“But let’s ask the more pressing question.” Her eyes flickered with amusement. My ears began to feel very hot. “What are you doing here?”
I stared down at the piano keys. “I needed a breather.”
“At this party, I meant.”
“Oh. Good question.”
She leaned back, our shoulders brushed. My cheeks burst into flames. “So,” she said, “you’ve come up here to escape the revelry below?”
“I could accuse you of the same.”
“Go ahead. I’m not evading that fact.”
“I’d like to leave altogether,” I said.
“Together?”
“No, I—altogether.” I ignored her smirk. “At least I wanted to until now.”
“I’m flattered. Noah brought you?”
“They needed a designated driver.”
A slight lull. “Who’s they?”
“Well, Rebecca,” I said. “Amir, too.”
“Oh.” Her face lightened. “That’s it.”
The door flew open and in wafted Remi, drink in hand, avoiding my eyes. “Sophia,” she said loudly. “Jesus, I’ve been looking everywhere. I had to barge into that other room with those—noises.”
“You thought that was me?”
“Obviously not. I was just curious who it was. And it was juicy.”
“Somehow I suspect you knew exactly where I was.”
“Well, I can’t say I’m not alarmed to find you with him,” Remi said flatly, looking at me with distress.
“I clearly hear you,” I mumbled.
Remi rolled her eyes. “Sophia, join me in the restroom, will you?”
“You really need me to accompany you?”
“No. But I’m extracting you from an unpleasant situation. Come, silly pianist. It’s urgent.”
“I’m okay, I think, Rem—”
Remi grabbed Sophia by the wrists. “You trust me? Let’s go.”
Sophia laughed, allowing herself to be dragged from the piano. “Okay, okay. Sorry, Hamlet. I wish you the best of luck.”
I sat a while longer, still stunned by the music, which for some reason made urgent the fact that I had no business being at this party, nor any real hope of being accepted by these strangers, unless I was providing a convenient favor: editing a paper, driving after a long night out. My headache returned, the air made heavy again. I was conscious suddenly of how alone I was, how alone I’d always been.
“The look on your face calls for a stiff drink.”
Someone holding two nondescript red cups entered the study. He was tall, his face unshaven, almost wolfish, his nose sharp and small. He had a spectacular tan, one that made his teeth gleam, and muddy, heavy-looking eyes. His gaze—piercing, defiant—stood out most.
“I’m all right, thanks,” I said.
He smiled. “Not a drinker?”
“Not really.”
“Neither am I,” he said, proceeding to drain most of his cup. “Don’t believe I’ve seen you before.”
“I’m new.”
“Really? It’s not too often that we’re given fresh blood.” He looked me over. “How does a newcomer find himself alone upstairs in the midst of a riotous Oliver Bellow party?”
“I wasn’t alone.”
His gaze lingered on the piano. “She plays beautifully.”
“Sophia? How’d you know she was here?”
“Intuition.”
“Yes,” I said. “She’s quite good.”
“Quite good?” He smiled darkly. “My friend, she’s a prodigy.” He paced the room, studying the paintings on d
isplay. He lingered before the one above the piano. A man, smiling vacantly, grasped at a woman in a flowing pink gown, floating uneasily above his head. “Unsettling, isn’t it?”
Emerald shades. A bluish-white sky. Treetops in the distance. The man had a harsh, burnt face. The woman, horizontal, arms spread into a crucifix, had her mouth pursed tight. “I suppose,” I said. “But pretty.”
“It appeals most, I’ve always thought, to those at home in the uncanny. Those with enough courage to travel great distances from ordinary life.” He smiled to himself. “Do you know what I mean?”
“Don’t think so, no.”
He turned from the painting. “Leon Bellow’s favorite, or so he claims. Familiar with it?”
“I’m not.”
“The Promenade. It’s a Chagall.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t know Chagall, do you?”
“Art isn’t really emphasized where I’m from.”
“Where’s that? Antarctica?”
“Borough Park.”
Another long drink. “Chagall is worth learning. I suspect you’ll see a lot of him now.”
“Why’s that?”
“Everyone has a Chagall.”
“Not my family.”
“Tell me,” he said, eyes narrowing. “How do you know Sophia?”
“I don’t, really.”
“Surely well enough to be allowed to hear her Appassionata?”
“I sort of stumbled in.” After a pause: “How’d you know what she played?”
“I heard fragments,” he said. “Down the hall.”
“You’re friends, then?”
“We’ve known each other a long time.” He drank further, gazing expressionlessly, waiting for me to speak.
“Shall we go downstairs?” I finally asked, desperate to get away, taking the initiative to stand.
We ambled through the hall and down the staircase to rejoin the party. I felt the hot air descend upon me again, sweat returning to my back.
“So.” He observed the crowd, which seemed to have increased substantially since I’d disappeared. “Would you say you’re tight with Oliver?”
“I’d say we’re loosely acquainted. I was brought here.”
“By whom?”
I scanned for Noah, to no avail. “That guy,” I said, finding Amir in the crowd. He was wrapped around Lily, making out against a wall.
