I went upstairs and took out a piece of paper.
I began. This time I didn’t think about what to say before I wrote. I just wrote.
I went downstairs for my backpack. My grandmothers were in the living room. They were playing mah-jongg, but they might as well have been playing different games.
“What is this character?” said Wai Po.
“The joker,” said Safta. “Haven’t you ever seen a joker?”
“This is not mah-jongg,” said Wai Po. “We do not play with jokers.”
“Of course it’s mah-jongg,” said Safta.
“You see these characters?” Wai Po said, pointing to the tiles. “Does this say a or b? Does this say king or ace? No. There are Chinese characters, for a Chinese game. No jokers.”
“This is not how you play,” Safta said.
“No,” said Wai Po. “This is not how you play.”
My grandmothers looked up and saw me at the same time. “David,” said Safta. “Come join us. I will show you how to play mah-jongg.”
“And then I’ll show you how to play correctly,” said Wai Po.
“Homework,” I said. “And I have to practice my Hebrew.”
“You can practice in front of us,” said Safta.
“I’m still not ready for an audience,” I said. “And I have to mail my letter to Alexi.”
“I’m glad you’re becoming friends,” Safta said.
“He hasn’t even written back.”
“Well, it takes a long time for mail to reach Russia,” she said. “If it even reaches him at all. You never know. The government may take the letters.”
“That’s true,” said Wai Po. “Or at least read them first.”
Whoa. They were actually agreeing again.
“Why would they want my letters?” I said.
Safta looked at Wai Po, who did the answering. “Because it’s something to take away,” she said.
Around five o’clock, Scott’s mom called and asked me to come over. “Scott’s been asking for you,” she said.
I wanted to make up an excuse, but then I remembered that Rabbi Doug said visiting the sick was a mitzvah. Scott wasn’t sick, but he was injured, which counted.
Scott was lying on the couch in his family room next to a snack table full of get-well cards. His right leg was in a cast, which I could see poking out of the bottom of a plaid blanket. He raised a hand when I walked in. “Hi.”
“Hi.” I stood in the middle of the room, not sure where to sit. I really didn’t think I should sit on the couch because Scott was taking up most of it. I sat on the floor and wondered what we could talk about. I was pretty sure that the hole, Scott’s parents, and our dubious friendship were off the list, which didn’t leave a whole lot.
Scott had Olympic time trial stuff on TV. The announcer reminded us that the US had boycotted the last Summer Olympics in Moscow because the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan.
“How are you doing?”
Scott shrugged. “Okay, I guess.” He tried to sit up a little and winced. “The doctor said I should stay home from school for a couple of days and take it easy.”
“I can get you your homework,” I offered. “If you want.”
“I think my mom’s worked it out with the school,” said Scott.
“Oh.”
We watched a guy shoot down a track on something called a luge. Instead of riding stomach down, this guy rode on his back.
“Luge is a pretty funny word,” I offered. I said it, drawing out the soft juh sound at the end. Scott didn’t laugh.
“I guess,” he said.
“Did we ever have any trivia questions about the luge?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Scott. “I don’t remember.”
I picked at the carpet, wondering how much longer I had to stay.
“So, uh,” Scott said. “Thanks for saving my life and all that. The paramedics said that if I’d been in there much longer, I would have gone into shock.” My dad had given me a list of all the things that could have happened. Like brain damage due to lack of oxygen. Or inhaling some weird fumes if we dug deep enough. Loss of limb. Death. Somehow, it didn’t seem right that death should be part of the list. It should be on another list by itself.
“You’re welcome,” I told Scott. We could have been strangers talking. “Hector should get some credit, too,” I added.
“Hector.” Finally, Scott had some emotion; he sounded like he was spitting. “He didn’t do anything. He just kept asking me questions about rivers in Africa.”
Last week, I would have let that comment slide by. But this time I couldn’t. “Actually,” I said, “Hector is the reason we even went out there. I wanted to show him the hole and if we hadn’t then we never would have …”
“So now he’s a hero?”
“I didn’t say that,” I said. “I just said he was the reason we were there.”
“It wasn’t his,” Scott said. “We had a deal. Until you started blowing me off for Hector.” He tried to make it sound like he was joking, but his voice was too hard.
“Well, you’ve been blowing me off for Kelli Ann,” I said. I tried to sound like I was joking, too. But it still hurt.
“Yeah.” Scott stared at the ceiling. “It’s not like it’s our choice, though. My mom and her mom, they’re like a divorced moms club. They go to each other’s houses. Eat pizza and drink wine. Lots of wine. Kelli Ann and I just get the pizza. We’re like their junior members or something.
“That Saturday Hector invited us to the movies? Divorced Moms Club. I didn’t really want to go to Hector’s house, but even if I had, my mom’s pretty prickly about this stuff.” He took a short breath. “Hector, man, and his perfect little family. Who wants to be around that?”
“The Clellands aren’t perfect,” I said. I’d heard them fight last year when I was over there. Well, they were speaking Spanish, so I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, but tone was everything.
“They went to Disney World,” said Scott. As if that defined perfect.
“So when did you and Kelli Ann …” I couldn’t bring myself to say the words, and I didn’t know the international sign for dating.
But Scott knew what I was trying to say. “Wait. You thought Kelli Ann and I were together?” He shook his head. “I told you, man, no relationships. Not for me. They just … implode.”
Any relief I felt was instantly obliterated by guilt. Scott was right: I had been blowing him off. But not for Hector. I was ignoring him because I was too mad to do anything else. But I wasn’t ignoring him anymore. When you see someone trapped at the bottom of a pit, a pit that you helped make, it kind of changes your perspective. You figure out that the real reason your friend’s been preparing for the end of the world is because his whole world’s gotten shaken up in ways that don’t have anything to do with US-Soviet relations. In spite of what he was saying about relationships, Scott had gone out of his way to connect with one person. Me. “I’m sorry,” I said. “About your parents.”
Scott buried his face into the couch cushions for a moment. “My ribs,” he said. “They hurt.”
“Do you want something?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“You’ll get better, though,” I said. “Right?” I realized it wasn’t clear whether I meant getting over the broken ribs or the divorce.
“So they say.” Scott’s answer wasn’t any clearer. “Meanwhile, I’m supposed to take it easy. It’s torture, just lying here with nothing to do.” He stared at the ceiling. “They fought over that, too. Whose couch I should lie on.”
“My grandmothers fight a lot,” I said.
“It’s different when it’s your parents. I’ll trade you, any day of the week.”
We watched more luging. Some of the guys looked as though they might shoot right over the side of the track, but really, after a while, they all kind of looked the same.
When I was younger, having fun was a lot easier. One time, Hector and I spent a whol
e afternoon playing paper football on Hector’s dining room table. We said we were playing for the world championship. Hector finally scored with the ball just hanging off the table, seeming to defy gravity. We jumped up and down and yelled did you see that?! Because it seemed absolutely incredible and amazing and it didn’t matter who won or lost. It was enough that we saw something incredible and amazing together.
Was that what growing up meant? Having less fun? If so, Rabbi Doug hadn’t covered that in any of our little talks. Or maybe we were stuck between the little-kid fun age and the being-able-to-drive fun age.
“I’m pretty tired,” said Scott.
“I’ll see you later,” I said. I tried not to look relieved to go.
“Xinfeng,” said Wai Po, holding up an envelope.
“Xinfeng,” I responded agreeably. Wai Pao had started trying to insert Chinese lessons when and where she could to even things out. Half the time I didn’t know what she was saying but I tried to play along.
Chinese had rising and falling sounds, too, like Hebrew, though when I told Safta that, she said, “I can’t hear it.” And when Wai Po showed me that in the traditional Chinese books, the writing was read from right to left, I told her that Hebrew was read the same way. She just said hmph, which made me think that they were really more alike than anyone liked to think.
We were working on the rest of my bar mitzvah invitations, the ones for the in-town guests. Apparently, we were already late because people should have six whole weeks to think about whether they were going to come or not. Wai Po was doing most of the writing, because she could do calligraphy, and she would do it for free.
“Qing ni ge wo shi ge xinfeng,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. This was my standard answer for when I got lost in Chinese. I figured I had a fifty-fifty shot that way.
Lauren reached over and handed Wai Po some more envelopes. “Wai Po asked you to hand over ten envelopes, dummy,” she said. She heard Wai Po, even though she had on her Walkman.
“Lauren,” Mom said sternly. “Don’t call David a dummy.” I noted that she didn’t say that I wasn’t actually a dummy. Then, to me: “So we have the suit. We still need a tallis.”
That’s the prayer shawl I would wear for the ceremony.
“I’ve taken care of that already,” Safta said.
“That too?” my mother said. “When?”
“A long time ago,” Safta said. “A surprise. What else?”
“I think we’re all set on the program,” my mother said. “If there are no more changes, I’m going to send it to the printer.”
I looked over at Lauren, who was bobbing her head as she stuck the invitations into the envelopes. She was being a good sport. She didn’t have to help.
“Actually, I think I have an idea for the program,” I said.
“Well, give it to me soon. And you haven’t given us your friends list yet.”
There was a reason for that, which was that nobody was on it besides the kids in my Hebrew school class. There were lots of acquaintances I could invite, but it was the people I should have been the most sure of that confused me. It didn’t help that winter break had started, so we couldn’t even talk at school. And I still hadn’t decided whether or not to invite Kelli Ann.
“You should send one to Alexi,” said Safta, who was in charge of stamp licking. “Seal’s grandson sent one to his twin.”
I wondered if my cousin Jacob would ever know how much extra work he had made for me.
“I just hope he doesn’t get in trouble, for receiving the invitation,” Safta said. Bao Bao padded into the room, but instead of sitting by Wai Po, he sat by Safta. She made a face at him.
“He won’t receive it,” said Wai Po, finishing an envelope with a flourish. She sounded certain.
“Maybe I shouldn’t send it, then,” I said.
Wai Po looked surprised. “Of course you should send,” she said. “Just because he will not receive it does not mean you should not send.”
That seemed like funny advice with the price of overseas stamps. But Safta agreed.
“What if Alexi emigrates to Israel? You could go to Israel and if you go you want to be able to tell Alexi that you sent an invitation.”
Then she added, “Seal’s grandson is going to Israel, you know.”
I finally sent out all my bar mitzvah invitations, including one to Hector and one to Scott. I thought maybe that would be a start toward fixing things. I checked the mail three days in a row, but they didn’t send back their response cards. Maybe they’d been confiscated, like Alexi’s letters. There were still invitations left, so I decided to send one to Kelli Ann, too.
Which gave me an idea. In my Torah portion, Moses was in the desert, getting ready to receive the Ten Commandments, and he was doing pretty much everything by himself: teaching the Jewish people, listening to them, being the judge. Then his father-in-law showed up and said, “The thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to perform it alone.” Maybe I needed help, too.
Kelli Ann could be part of the help I needed. And that meant that I needed to call her on the phone.
I got Kelli Ann’s number from the phone book and then I spent forty-five minutes working up the courage to dial. Bao Bao followed me, along with a cloud of scary thoughts. What should I say first? What should I say second? What if she didn’t say anything?
“Why do you keep walking around the house with the phone book?” asked Lauren. Her button for the day said, ASK ME HOW. So I did.
“I need to prepare for a phone call,” I said. Being prepared, that’s what was key: for nuclear war and for talking to girls.
“You’re going to call Kelli Ann, aren’t you? That girl from Thanksgiving?”
“No. Maybe. Yes.” I pounded my head against the door frame. “Yes.”
“Okay,” said Lauren. “Don’t be afraid and if you run out of things to talk about, ask questions.”
“What kinds of questions? Trivia questions?”
Lauren shook her head. “You make this sound like rocket science.” She got an index card and dictated some questions to me. How is your break going so far? What did you do today? What did you get for Christmas?
“How do you know these things?”
“Duh,” said Lauren.
I looked down at the card and wrote another line. Have you seen The Right Stuff? I pretended that if she said no I would ask her to go with me even though I had already seen the movie on Christmas day, after we went out for Chinese. I also made a note to joke about the Hanukkah wreath, since that was the thing we had talked about the most.
Then it was time.
I grabbed the hallway phone and took it into my room. The cord was just long enough.
Ring.
What if I got the answering machine? Should I leave a message?
Ring.
If I left a message, would I say “This is David” or “This is David Horowitz,” because there were three Davids in our grade? And a number, I should leave our number, right? And maybe say it twice, just to be considerate. Was there enough time for that? Why didn’t I write down a leaving-a-message script?
Ring.
I was just going to have to wing it.
“Hello?”
I took a deep breath, and said, “Hello,” back.
Kelli Ann was really good at talking on the phone. It made me wonder if she was used to talking to boys. I wasn’t used to talking to girls on the phone (or anywhere else) except for Safta, on Sundays, when she still lived in New York. “So listen, I was hoping you’d do me a favor,” I said.
“That depends on what it is,” she said, which was probably smart.
Here was my plan: I wanted Kelli Ann to plant the idea that the trivia team really needed to get together and practice. A lot. Because we were known and failure was not an option.
“That sounds easy,” she said. “I can do it tomorrow at Wine and Whine.”
That was what she called it, instead of Divorced Moms Club.
“Good,” I said. “Maybe it will keep them from talking about the fallout shelter.”
“I don’t think anything will stop them from talking about that,” Kelli Ann said.
“Yeah, we really dug ourselves into a hole,” I said. I hadn’t meant to make a pun, but Kelli Ann laughed. It sounded like bells.
When we hung up, I realized that I never had to use my cheat sheet, not even once.
I called Hector’s house next.
“David!” said Mrs. Clelland when she answered the phone. “Where have you been? Hector has been home all this time, mope, mope, mope. His father just dragged him out to the movies.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I said, “Would you tell him I called, please?” I was about to say good-bye, but then I realized that getting Mrs. Clelland on board was probably even better than talking to Hector. I gave her the details, and I said that Hector could spend the night, too.
“I am sure Hector will love that. I will tell him. How lucky Hector is to have a friend like you,” she said.
I crossed my fingers, and hoped that what she said was true.
Kelli Ann called the day after Whine and Wine. I nearly dropped the phone when Wai Po handed it to me.
“I just wanted to let you know,” Kelli Ann said, “that Scott said he’s ready to start practicing again. He practically wanted to start right then, but he had left Trivial Pursuit at his dad’s house.”
“How did you convince him?” I asked.
“I just said some things about the honor of our school. And how, if the team lost, everyone would blame him because he was captain.”
Even if they weren’t going together, she knew him better than I wanted her to; she knew how his brain worked.
“I also told my friends that this was a really big deal, and that you guys weren’t practicing,” she said. “So I think they’ll put the pressure on. Now you owe me.”
“I do?” I said. The idea of owing Kelli Ann anything was kind of dizzying.
“Yup.”
“I can repay you by bringing honor to the school,” I said. “If we win.” Or with a movie? I thought. But I couldn’t get that part out.
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