This Is Where I Leave You

by Jonathan Tropper

  “Kaddish is said responsively. It can only be said with a minyan, a quorum of at least ten men present to respond.”

  Paul looks at his childhood friend exasperatedly. Give me a break!

  But Boner just looks back and shrugs. I don’t make the rules. Paul blinks first. “When do services start?”

  Boner checks his watch. “In twenty-five minutes. You’d better get dressed.”

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  8:15 a.m.

  The suit I wore to the funeral has been lying on the basement fl oor in a crumpled heap ever since, so Mom brings me up to her bedroom and picks out one of Dad’s suits for me. Dad only ever wore two kinds of suits: midnight blue and black. When I try on the black one Mom has chosen it fits perfectly, except for the slacks being an inch or so too short. I am somewhat surprised, because I’ve always seen him as taller than me. I never got close enough to know better. Every so often, based on the tick of some internal clock, Dad would randomly decide to bring us all to temple on Saturday morning. “Get showered,” he would say. “Sport jacket and tie.” And Paul and I would grumble as we dressed. On these occasions Wendy was allowed to use Mom’s makeup, so we’d all end up waiting in the living room while she fussed with her blush and rouge and Mom dolled up little Phillip in the androgynous sailor outfits that Dad worried would make him gay. The yarmulkes in the olivewood box at the entrance to the sanctu­

  ary were black and constructed from nylon so insubstantial that a light draft from the air-conditioning vents was enough to launch them off

  our curly hair like hang gliders. Mom would fasten them to our hair with bobby pins while Dad threw a prayer shawl yellowed with age over his shoulders like a scarf. Then we’d follow him into the sanctuary, paus­

  ing every few feet as he stopped to shake someone’s hand and say, “Good shabbos.” We would follow suit, shaking the large cracked hands of these men, inhaling the clean scents of their aftershave and breath mints. Rabbi Buxbaum would come down from his seat to greet us warmly, his smile obscured by his silver handlebar mustache. “Gentlemen,” he would say with a wink, pressing hard butterscotch candies into our palms as he shook our hands, “and I use the term loosely.”

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  Within ten minutes Mom would have to take Phillip outside to run through the halls of the Hebrew school we’d all sporadically attended, and Dad would close his eyes and rock lightly in his seat, humming along with the cantor to the liturgical melodies he recalled from his own loosely affiliated youth. Paul would make a goal out of two spread fi n­

  gers at the edge of his prayer book, and I would attempt to fl ick my crumpled candy wrapper in. If Dad caught us he would smack the backs of our heads and tell us to knock it off. Wendy sat upright, crossing and uncrossing her legs, studying the women’s dresses and mannerisms, scanning the rows for cute boys.

  When services were over, there would be sacramental wine and light refreshments in the social hall. While my parents chatted with the other adults over creamed herring and pastries, Paul and I would sneak little plastic shot glasses of schnapps from the liquor table and try not to gag as it burned its way down our throats. Sometimes a kid would pro­

  cure a tennis ball and we’d all go out to the lot behind the synagogue to play stickball in our shirtsleeves. By noon we’d be home again, suits hung up, our shirts piled on the dining room table for the dry cleaner, Mom and Dad holed up in their room for an afternoon “nap.” All this happened two, maybe three times a year. There were years when it didn’t happen at all, and then, one Saturday, apropos of nothing, Dad would once again wake us with “Sports jackets and ties, boys. Sports jackets and ties.” It seemed to happen less and less as we got older, until, by the time I was a teenager, the only time we ever went to temple was for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

  Once, when I was old enough to ponder these things and young enough to think there might be credible answers, I whispered to Dad during Rosh Hashanah services, “Do you believe in God?”

  “Not really,” he said. “No.”

  “Then why do we come here?”

  He sucked thoughtfully on his Tums tablet and put his arm around 194

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  me, draping me under his musty woolen prayer shawl, and then shrugged. “I’ve been wrong before,” he said. And that pretty much summed up what theology there was to fi nd in the Foxman home.

  9:40 a.m.

  Kaddish is only said by the blood relatives of the deceased, so Barry, Tracy, and Alice have all opted out of the trip, and who could blame them? My siblings, Mom, and I arrive at temple an hour late, but Boner has reserved a row of pews for us. I can feel all eyes in the cavernous room on us as we make our way down the aisle, my brothers and I feel­

  ing awkward in our flimsy black yarmulkes and tattered prayer shawls borrowed from the rack in the hall, which we wear slung over our shoul­

  ders like scarves. Boner wears a long white prayer shawl with bits of silver trim around the collar that jingle like chain mail. He descends like a spirit from his high seat on the front platform to dramatically hug each one of us as we enter the pew. This seems gratuitous to me, as we all saw each other an hour earlier, like when talk show hosts warmly greet their guests even though they’ve obviously talked backstage before the show. And Boner is definitely putting on a show. He strides the aisle like a political candidate, shaking his congregants’ hands, giving the younger guys a quick hug with a fist to the back, leaning in to kiss the women on the cheek, tousling the carefully brushed hair of the children, all the while wishing everyone a good shabbos in a loud stage whisper meant to be heard above the droning of the cantor. He is clearly aware that all eyes are on him, and he basks in the attention of his captive audience. Boner has become the kind of rabbi whose agenda seems to be comprised solely of proving to the younger generations that Judaism is cool, that rabbis can be hip, that he, Charlie Grodner, is a happening

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  guy. Hence the Armani suit, the abundance of product in his hair, the trendy sideburns, the diamond stud in his left ear. He’s a rock star rabbi, and whether that’s done to sell God to today’s youth or simply as the sublimation of his unfulfilled Zeppelin fantasies is anyone’s guess. I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it’s hard to see divine pur­

  pose in the man who doodled anatomically correct images of anal sex in the back of his trigonometry notebook.

  The temple hasn’t changed since my childhood. The high stucco ceiling, the grand, bleached wood ark up front containing a handful of Torahs, each one colorfully adorned in a cloth cover and a silver crown. Th

  e “In Memoriam” plaques that line the walls, each name accompa­

  nied by a tiny orange bulb to be lit every year on the anniversary of their death. The older men, prayer shawls slung over stooped shoulders and weathered blazers, sucking on hard candies and humming along with the cantor. The younger men, with their better suits and creased yar­

  mulkes; the women, dressed to the nines, their prayer books balanced on their laps atop designer handbags. The stained glass windows bend­

  ing the sunlight, dedications handwritten on the glass in black calligra­

  phy. And the large, raised platform up front, where the rabbi’s lectern stands directly under the postmodern Eternal Light, a few feet in front of the ark, and where Boner now ascends to address the crowd.

  “What’s up, everyone?” he says. “Good shabbos, Elmsbrook!”

  There is a low rumble of response.

  “Oh, come on, I know you can do better than that. Good shabbos, Elmsbrook!”

  The crowd responds with a “Good shabbos,” self-conscious and loud.

  “That’s what I’m talking about!” Boner says. “I’d like to take a mo­

  ment to welcome the Foxman family back to our temple. As many of you know, Mort
Foxman, one of our founding members, passed away a few days ago. His wife, Hillary, and his children, Paul, Judd, Wendy, and 196

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  Phillip, are here to say Kaddish for him and mark his passing before God and before their community. Mort was a well-respected businessman here in Elmsbrook; many of us grew up getting our sneakers and base­

  ball gloves at Foxman’s. On a personal note, I spent a good part of my childhood in the Foxman home, playing ball with Paul and Judd—”

  “Smoking weed,” I whisper.

  “Jerking off .” Paul.

  “Trying to touch my boobs.” Wendy.

  “. . . and he leaves behind this legacy, his work ethic and his uncom­

  promising values, for his children and grandchildren to carry on. May the Lord comfort the family among the mourners of Zion.”

  “Amen,” the crowd responds.

  “I’d like to call Hillary and her children up to the bimah now, to say Kaddish for their beloved husband and father, Morton Foxman.”

  Mom stands up first and strides down the aisle in her stiletto heels like it’s a runway, garnering appreciative glances from the older men in the crowd, including Peter Applebaum, who shamelessly watches her ass the entire way down.

  “She couldn’t find a longer skirt for temple?” Wendy mutters. My siblings and I follow her up to the bimah, a raised table at the front of the room, where the cantor hands each of us a laminated sheet with the words of the Kaddish written in Hebrew and then transliter­

  ated in English. “Just read it slowly and pause at the dashes for the re­

  sponses,” he says. “You’ll be fi ne.”

  “Okay, everyone,” Paul says. “On three?”

  “Yit’gadal v’yit’kadash sh’mei raba,” we say.

  “Amen,” says the congregation, all rising to their feet.

  “B’alma di v’ra khir’utei v’yam’likh mal’khutei . . .”

  We read off the ancient Hebrew words, with no idea of what they might mean, and the congregation responds with more words that they

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  don’t understand either. We are gathered together on a Saturday morn­

  ing to speak gibberish to each other, and you would think, in these god­

  less times, that the experience would be empty, but somehow it isn’t. Th

  e five of us, huddled together shoulder to shoulder over the bimah, read the words aloud slowly, and the congregation, these old friends and acquaintances and strangers, all respond, and for reasons I can’t begin to articulate, it feels like something is actually happening. It’s got noth­

  ing to do with God or souls, just the palpable sense of goodwill and sup­

  port emanating in waves from the pews around us, and I can’t help but be moved by it. When we reach the end of the page, and the last “amen”

  has been said, I’m sorry that it’s over. I could stay up here a while longer. And as we step down to make our way back to the pews, a quick survey of the sadness in my family’s wet eyes tells me that I’m not the only one who feels that way. I don’t feel any closer to my father than I did before, but for a moment there I was comforted, and that’s more than I expected. 10:12 a.m.

  As the cantor drones on, I stick my hand into the pocket of Dad’s suit and discover what feels like an old, twisted tissue but turns out, upon further inspection, to be a very fat, bona fide, home-rolled joint. I palm the joint, hold it out over Phillip’s lap, and discreetly show it to him. Th e

  only thing wider than his eyes is his smile. “I have to go to the bath­

  room,” he says. He stands up and heads up the aisle. A few minutes later, I follow. The bathroom smells of powdered crotch, so we push open the double fi re doors and head down the darkened hallways of the Temple Israel Hebrew School. Phillip finds an unlocked classroom and we sit down in miniature chairs, still wrapped in our prayer shawls.

  “Where’d you get the doobage?” Phillip says. 198

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  “It was in Dad’s suit.”

  “Dad was a stoner?” Phillip says. “So much about my life makes sense now.”

  “Shut up. It was probably medicinal. They prescribe it for cancer patients.”

  “I prefer to think that every once in a while Dad just liked to toke up and consider the universe.”

  “Think what you want, just light the fucker.”

  A few moments later, we’re sprawled at our tiny attached desks, while the three-dimensional letters of the Hebrew alphabet taped above the blackboard float over us in a smoky haze.

  “Can you still read Hebrew?” Phillip says.

  “I doubt it,” I say. “I know the letters, though.”

  “Aleph, beth, gimel, daleth . . . ,” Phillip sings.

  “He, vav, zayin, heth, teth, yod,” I chime in. We sing the rest of the Aleph-Bet together solemnly, like a funereal psalm, and when we’re done, our voices echo briefly in the room.

  “I miss Dad,” Phillip says.

  “I do too.”

  “I feel very alone. Like when I mess up now, he won’t be there to help me.”

  “I guess we’re offi

  cially adults now.”

  “Fuck that,” Phillip says, taking an extra long pull on the joint. He blows out a perfect ring and then blows a jet of smoke through it. When it comes to worthless frat-boy skills, Phillip is second to none. He can light a match with his thumbnail, open a beer bottle with his teeth, flip a cigarette from the carton to his mouth with a flick of his wrist, play the William Tell over­

  ture by flicking his fingers against the soft underside of his jaw, burp the national anthem, fart on cue, and dislocate his shoulder upon request.

  “Do you think maybe that’s why you’re with Tracy?” I say. “Because you want to know there’s someone looking after you?”

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  Phillip lazily passes me the joint. “I don’t know, but I like that theory much better than the one that postulates I’m trying to sleep with Mom.”

  The door to the classroom flies open. “What the hell?” Paul says.

  “Oh. Christ.”

  “In or out,” I say.

  “I should have known.” He steps into the room, closing the door behind him.

  “We learned from the master,” Phillip says.

  “Give it here.” Paul takes a drag and sits down in one of the chairs.

  “Damn! That is some strong shit. Where’d you get it?”

  “Dad,” I say, indicating the blazer. “A gift from the beyond.”

  “I wouldn’t have pegged Dad for a fan of the weed.”

  “People can change,” Phillip says.

  “People are who they are,” Paul says, leaning back in his little chair to take another generous drag. “I really miss him,” he says.

  “Me too,” I say.

  “Me three.” Phillip.

  A ray of sunlight comes through the window, passing through the thick cloud of ganja smoke in a way that makes you think of God and heaven, and we sit there getting baked in our skullcaps and prayer shawls, three lost brothers in mourning, the full impact of their loss only now beginning to dawn on them.

  “I love you guys,” Phillip says, just as the smoke alarm goes off and the sprinklers come on.

  10:25 a.m.

  Fortunately, the sprinklers in the sanctuary are in a diff erent zone and must be set off independently, so the worshippers do not get soaked 200

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  as they evacuate the building. In the classroom, though, the water rains down on us as Phillip grabs what’s left of the joint, still lit, and swallows it whole, with the confidence of someone for whom joint swallowing is a routine practice. The sprinklers have also been activated in the hall­

  way, and we run through the indoor storm, stopping at the fi re doors that lead to the lob
by area. Peering through the narrow vertical win­

  dows of the door, we can see the crowd moving through the lobby and out the glass doors to the synagogue’s front lawn.

  “Just act casual,” Paul says. “Blend in.”

  It seems easy enough, only because we’re too stoned to realize that three men dripping in their suits might stand out. The air-conditioning is cold against my wet clothes. We discard our soaked prayer shawls and join the crowd moving out the doors and soon find ourselves standing in the parking lot, being warmed by the latemorning sun.

  “What did you do!” my mother shouts, her heels clattering on the asphalt as she storms over to us. Wendy follows behind her, enjoying every second of it.

  “Nothing,” Phillip says. “It was a false alarm.”

  “Look at the three of you!”

  “You guys smell like a dorm room,” Wendy says, wrinkling up her nose.

  “You got high at temple?” Mom says, outraged.

  “Of course not.” Paul.

  “No.” Me.

  “Who’s hungry?” Phillip.

  In the distance, we can hear the wail of the fi re trucks.

  “Ah, shit,” Paul says.

  Mom leans against a car, exasperated. “I blame myself.”

  “That’s a relief,” I say. “Now can we get out of here?”

  But just then Boner emerges from the crowd and comes striding

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  purposefully over to us, brow furrowed, face flushed with anger. “What the hell, Paul?” he demands.

  Paul shrugs. “False alarm, I guess.”

  “And you three are the only ones who got wet.”

  “It’s been that kind of week,” I say.

  Boner steps right up into Paul’s face. “I smell weed.”

  “You would know.”

  The two childhood friends stare each other down for a moment and then look away. The rules have changed. Boner sighs. “You guys should get out of here before the cops show up.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Wendy says. “Come on, Mom. I’ll drive.”

  “Thanks, buddy,” Paul says, smacking Boner’s shoulder.

  “Just go.”

  “Thanks for everything,” I say, shaking his hand. “Good shabbos.”