by Hopen, David
“Sophia,” I said, flustered, nearly jumping.
“So you don’t like being snuck up on, do you?”
“I guess I don’t take it as well as you do.” I returned the sneakers to their place on display. “What’re you doing here?” I asked stupidly.
“Shopping, believe it or not.” Her amused arrogance had returned. All traces of her anger from Oliver’s party were gone. She noticed the stack of green shirts beside me. “You’re not buying that hideous thing?”
“Of course not,” I said, cringing internally. “Just waiting for my mother.”
“You shop with your mom?”
“Not usually,” I said shamefully, immediately regretting having opened my mouth.
“Does she dress you in the morning, too?”
“I just needed some new clothing. For school.”
“Indisputably.”
“It’s that bad?”
She eyed me up and down. “Unfortunately.”
“If only you could’ve seen me in Brooklyn. My black hat was very avant-garde, actually.”
“Did you really wear a black hat?”
“Well, technically it was a dark gray one. And it was only at my bar mitzvah.”
Her phone buzzed but she ignored it. “Adorable.”
“As you can probably guess, I’m pretty new to the whole shopping exercise.”
“You should’ve asked me.” She allowed me to consider momentarily whether this offer could possibly be real. Watching my head swim, she smiled slightly and pointed to a middle-schooler in the front of the store. “That’s Harrison, my little brother. I’m preparing him for his first day of eighth grade. Handsome, isn’t he?”
I caught myself in a half nod, unsure how to respond.
“Two girlfriends at camp this summer, or so my mother heard.” She paused, tilted her head, looked at me funny.
“What?”
“About the other night.” She lowered her voice. “What happened at Oliver’s, I mean.”
“Oh. That was—nothing.”
“I don’t think it was nothing.”
“I’m okay, really.”
“Well, I wanted to apologize.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“That’s right. I walked off and left you there. Even though I had suspicions. And I heard things ended up being somewhat . . . unexpected. So, I’m really sorry if you were forced into anything uncomfortable—”
“Yeah, no. I mean, thank you but—”
My mother chose this moment to drift over. Unabashedly, though I suppose she didn’t realize what she was doing, considering this was now only the second time she’d seen me within ten yards of a nonrelative female, she swept Sophia up and down: her tight black jeans, the dim blue of her eyes, her unflappable self-assurance. “Hello,” my mother said, innocently enough.
Sophia turned from me and offered a hand. “Sophia Winter. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Eden.” I could tell she had a way with adults—confident, slightly standoffish, as if addressing an equal.
“You’re in Aryeh’s class?”
“Indeed I am.”
My mother snapped her fingers. “And you were at the barbecue the other day, weren’t you?”
“Good memory.”
“How wonderful. I’m glad Ari is meeting such nice new friends.”
“He’s fitting in marvelously, you should know.” She offered me a knowing look. I glanced away and cleared my throat. “Well, I need to finish with my brother, he’s way too picky for a thirteen-year-old, but it was lovely to meet you, Mrs. Eden.” She nodded, giving us her starlit eyes. “See you tomorrow, Ari.”
Sophia left. My mother and I stood silently, embarrassed by the ordeal. “Well,” my mother finally said, unable to stop grinning, “she’s gorgeous.”
I grabbed the shopping bag from her and walked ahead. “Should we go now?”
She nodded, pretending to ignore the look in my eyes.
September
Endure that toil of growing up;
The ignominy of boyhood; the distress
Of boyhood changing into man;
The unfinished man and his pain
—Yeats, “A Dialogue of Self and Soul”
Orientation was on a dreary, end-of-summer Florida day: light rain, a chill in the air, the sky a bleak gray.
“Fitting weather,” Noah grumbled in the car ride over. He had found me a block away from our houses, walking slowly, squinting through the drizzle, and insisted I get in.
The parking lot was chaos: music blasting, cars honking, bodies flitting in and out of traffic. We barely avoided a nasty collision, after some kid, in pursuit of a football, vaulted onto Niman’s moving car, causing her to swerve violently within inches of the Audi’s taillights. I watched friends reunite after long summers, underclassmen flirt shyly, strangers throw confused looks upon finding me in Noah’s passenger seat. That itching, deep-seated unease from the Harris barbecue, the recognition of being hopelessly out of place, returned.
I had prepared to embrace this unease. Finally, I told myself, I had before me the opportunity I wanted. I could look upon unfamiliar faces and pretend to be anyone. I could be extroverted, easygoing, a tabula rasa. Yet when the moment came I failed, as I knew I would, to see myself beyond what I’d been until now: solitary, a formless presence in a foreign world. I accepted this in the way one accepts scientific fact—unfeelingly, without any resentment toward a truth that, though previously unrealized, had always existed.
We parked on the far side of the lot, next to Oliver. He was perched on the hood of his yellow Jeep, his eighteenth birthday gift from his parents, as he boasted shamelessly, and blaring Jay-Z.
“Did you just have a quick morning toke?” Noah asked cheerfully.
“I do what must be done to get by,” Oliver said piously.
“You realize the day hasn’t even started.”
“Yup,” Oliver said, nodding along to Jay-Z’s voice. “Therein probably lies the problem.”
Evan stumbled from the passenger seat, coughing. He shared Oliver’s glassy-eyed look. My jaw tightened. Obsessively, I’d replayed the scene from the party, trying to determine whether Sophia’s accusation held water or whether it was ludicrous, as Noah continued to suggest. Perhaps I had, in fact, simply drunk too much. It was my first time, after all, and it wasn’t as if I could tell the difference between mixing too many drinks and having a mysterious substance slipped into my cocktail. I was trying my best to let it go, to assume that, even if Sophia were right, whatever happened could be reduced to bizarre miscommunication. Noah, sensing my turmoil, steered me from Evan and toward the building.
My previous glimpses of the school failed to convey just how spectacular the campus was in the flesh. I marveled, much to Noah’s amusement, over the perfectly manicured lawns, the endless sports fields stretching into the distance, the way the building itself, in my eyes, resembled some sort of skyscraping cruise ship. A bulletin board in the lobby, showcasing a banner that read IVY LEAGUE ALUMNI, displayed pictures of beaming students being hugged by the same woman: short and slim, with implacably iron eyes. Noah dragged me along to the library, where we waited in line for textbooks.
“Let’s see,” he said, grabbing my schedule from my hand. “AP English Lit. AP Bio, I’m sure as hell not in that one. Same Talmud and Tanach. Elementary Hebrew? Don’t you come from the Old Country?”
I shrugged. “That’d be Yiddish. My yeshiva didn’t believe in modern Hebrew.”
“But of course.”
I pointed to a class on the bottom of my schedule. “What’s this one?”
“J-Hip,” he said. “Jewish History and Philosophy. Senior tradition. Mr. Harold teaches it—real sweet guy, super knowledgeable, passionate about the subject, but twenty years past his expiration date. Class behavior, unfortunately, borders on abusive.”
Amir spotted us and forced his way over. He immediately requested our schedules and frowned as he vetted mine. Not that he had reason to wor
ry: I considered myself intelligent, certainly well-read, but knew I’d benefited immeasurably from my lack of competition in Brooklyn and figured I’d been set back so irreparably by Torah Temimah that I’d be firmly out of Amir’s academic constellation, if not light-years behind the average student. This dawned on him in a matter of moments. “You’ve never taken geometry?” He did a poor job disguising his relief.
We received our books—heavy, forbidding books that excited me but left me restless—stored them in our lockers and then were directed to another line for pictures. I took mine, smiling stiffly, aware of the stares I was receiving, mentally applauding myself for deciding against wearing the green shirt, and then watched as Noah and Oliver switched places for their pictures. (“Look at you, Ari!” Rebecca said, examining my picture in the photographer’s camera, causing several heads to turn, which I suppose was her intention, despite my discomfort. “Who knew you’d be so photogenic? Those dimples? That cleft in your chin? That smile! We’ve got a diamond in the rough, don’t we?”) Our grade—one hundred and four students, over three times the size of my class in Brooklyn—was then ushered into the assembly hall, an enormous, regal room with velvet seats and humming lights, to join the rest of the student body. Girls were ushered to the right, boys to the left, though no mechitza went up. I followed Noah to the back.
Onstage stood a thinly bearded, dignified man with finely combed silver hair and a fierce but kind face. He was short and waiflike and wiped his nose with a multicolored handkerchief—red, white, blue, green, yellow, black—featuring the South African flag. “That’s Rabbi Feldman,” Noah told me. “Head of the Judaic Department. Bit of a disciplinarian, but really nice guy from Cape Town.”
Rabbi Feldman waited for everyone to shuffle in and quiet down. The front row was conspicuously empty. “Harris,” he called out in a sharp accent, his voice surprisingly emphatic for someone so skeletal, “please corral your row and move to the front.” I stood immediately—it seemed an innocuous request—but realized everyone else was grumbling, rising reluctantly. Oliver, sitting to Noah’s left, made a comment under his breath.
Rabbi Feldman raised his brows. “Pardon me, Bellow?”
“My apologies, Rabbi,” Oliver said. “Please don’t think I haven’t missed you terribly.” Our row broke into snickers. Biting back a grin, Rabbi Feldman politely warned Oliver to shut up.
We moved to the front, just a few feet from Rabbi Feldman. I noticed Gemma and a group of girls whispering, and then stole a glance at Sophia—noble-eyed, ebullient—sitting between Rebecca and Remi.
Rabbi Feldman cleared his throat and tried regaining his smile. “Welcome back, all. Wonderful to see everyone so—enthusiastic.” He looked sarcastically toward Oliver, who gave an obnoxious thumbs-up. “The school is excited about this new year, as we think you all”—he gave the room an unconvincing wave—“are an extraordinary group. We’re thrilled to have you as student leaders and to partner with you in making this year a success.”
The back door burst open. In strolled Evan, whistling defiantly. In synchrony, the room turned to face him. Girls stared. Several junior boys leaped to their feet, as if standing for a rabbi. Sophia, I noticed, averted her eyes toward Rebecca, smiling unfocusedly.
“Surprise, surprise,” Rabbi Feldman said, sighing into the microphone. “Mr. Stark, good of you to join us.”
Evan took his time making his way down the aisle, wholly indifferent to the fact that several hundred pairs of eyeballs were presently glued to him. “May I note publicly, Rabbi, that summer was good to you?” Evan said. “You look really—sinewy. Was it that paleo diet I told you about?”
Rabbi Feldman held his stare and then, to my surprise, failed to suppress a chortle. “Don’t believe I won’t spend several weeks kicking myself for laughing at that. Freshmen, I advise you to refrain from emulating this young man’s—pluck, let’s call it. He’s a poor role model. Impersonators shall undoubtedly fail to pull that off unscathed.”
The room broke into giggles. Having caused as much commotion as he could, Evan took a seat in the row behind us.
“Swear to God,” Noah said, turning to face Evan. “This kid gets away with murder.”
“Where was I? Ah, yes, since you’re all such fine, mature young adults,” Rabbi Feldman continued, rolling his eyes, “we expect no behavioral issues, whatsoever, and trust you’ll treat the school with the same respect with which you seek to be treated. Our seniors from last year were a fantastic group—”
“Deplorable bunch,” Oliver whispered to Noah. “Did they even have a senior prank?”
“—and we expect similar cooperation and leadership from our current elder statesmen.” He went on like this for a while: the key to the year would be building genuine respect between students and faculty, growing together, enriching both our Judaism and our secular studies. When he finished, he asked us to stand for Rabbi Bloom, our principal.
“The big boy,” Noah whispered. “You’ll like him. Smartest man you’ll meet.”
He was tall, slender, slightly bent, no older than sixty. He had an elfin face, steel-gray hair, detailed eyes that swept the room. “Ladies and gentlemen.” His voice was low and thoughtful and gave the impression that he was speaking directly to you. “Freshmen and seniors, sophomores and juniors, welcome home.”
“He still can’t really get over himself,” Evan muttered, smiling.
Noah nodded toward Evan. “He has a pretty deep-seated love-hate thing going on with Bloom,” Noah explained. “Well, honestly, it’s mostly just love. You’ll see.”
“. . . it’s my distinct pleasure to serve as your Head of School, at the forefront of our nation’s Modern Orthodox high schools. I remember some twenty-five years ago, when we first labored to build this institution, I envisioned an academy where students would, in the deepest sense, enhance their instructors. Aristotle believed education, though bearing sweet fruit, contains bitter roots.” He paused, surveyed the crowd. “With all due respect to Morenu Aristotle, I reject the notion that education should necessitate anything but excellence, in principle and in spirit. There are not, I’m sure you’ll agree, bitter roots among your ranks.”
My row wasn’t listening. They were busy hearing Evan recount, through whispers, his mind-bending summer—girls in small Spanish towns, swims in the Tajo, breathtaking hikes in the Cordillera Cantabrica, the forty-year-old woman next to whom he woke on the side of a riverbank. Yet I was entranced. Rabbi Bloom spoke opulently and at a rabid pace, weaving the Judaic with the secular: John Adams’ insistence that Jews civilized the world morally; Talmudic law as an intellectual forerunner of Lockean governmental theory; the difference between Marxist slavery and religious opportunity. Every word was in stark contrast to the broken English of my former rabbis. This, I told myself, was the opportunity for which I fled Borough Park.
“Fire is powerful,” he said as he wound down. “But it cannot affect the inflammable. Set fire to glass, to bricks, to concrete, and nothing will happen.” He looked us over, face by face. He had an intimidating way: not coldness, but intellectual urgency. “If, as students, you’re refractory to inspiration, nothing will penetrate, regardless of how incendiary it may be.” With that, we were dismissed, yet as we shuffled toward the exit, Rabbi Bloom again picked up the microphone. “Mr. Stark, Mr. Bellow, Mr. Harris and Mr. Samson, a word.”
“Picking up where we left off,” Noah said. “Early in the year for this, isn’t it?”
Oliver patted my back. “Sing our tale, kid.”
I headed for the door while they mounted the stage. I stole a glance at the four of them, whispering in a circle, and at Rabbi Bloom, who looked them over with quiet admiration. I allowed myself to burn, for a moment, with inexplicable jealousy, and then I left them alone in the grand room.
* * *
MONDAY, OUR FIRST REAL DAY of school, was gorgeous, everything dripping with sunlight, palm trees swaying in unison, the sky a glorious blue. I was even more nervous than I was on Fr
iday. I’d spent the weekend considering the events of the previous month: I had fallen into a group in which I didn’t belong, lied to my parents, neglected a morning of tefillin, drunk myself into oblivion, shattered shomer negiah and, potentially, been slipped some drug. After some deliberation, I emerged from Shabbat resolved to separate myself from these strange events, to regain a state of stasis. I had moved from Brooklyn with a desire to start anew, yes, but not like this.
“No way,” Noah said as we walked into school, checking an announcement on the bulletin board.
“What?”
“This is hilarious.” He ran his finger over the paper tacked to the board. “Look, this is the list of minyanim. There’s the normal minyan, which hosts, like, eighty-five percent of the school, and then there’s the Sephardic minyan, for our Mediterranean brethren. And then,” he jabbed his finger at my name on the list, “last but not least, there’s what we call the explanatory minyan, which is what we’re in.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Put it this way: it’s easier to separate the good from the rotten. It’s supposed to be educational, like remedial prayer, Davening 101.”
I nodded. I saw where this was going.
“So the great irony is that this school placed its one Hasidic Brooklyn native in a minyan for apostates.”
I didn’t find this nearly as amusing. I’d been placed not by chance, I wanted to point out, but because of my association with him and his friends. “I’m not Hasidic.”
“Fine. Semi-Hasidic.”
I shook my head.
“Whatever the proper term is, then. How do you identify?”
I shrugged. “Frum. Jewish. I don’t know.”
“Anyway, don’t look so offended.” He bit back a grin. “It’s a good thing.”
“How is it possibly a good thing?”
“Because it’s fun, we’re all in it. Well, everyone except for Amir, of course, but that’s to be expected.”
