by Alison Pick
He wants me to know he likes the ritual, but he doesn’t believe in the miracle.
I decide to follow Granny and Gumper’s example, to eschew the central part of the service, but at the last minute I change my mind. The choir has moved on to “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” I join Dad and the long line of townspeople—parishioners—shuffling up the aisle to the altar. The bench is plush and pillowy beneath my knees. I lower my eyes, and feel the minister’s presence moving down the line of bowed heads in my direction. When it’s my turn to be blessed, he places the host in my crossed palms and says, “The body of Christ, given for you.”
The wafer dissolves on my tongue.
I think of the Catholic school where Dad was raised, of the thin sheets of dough dotted with holes where the hosts were punched out. The nuns would send them home with the children, in cookie tins.
Dad is kneeling beside me, his shoulder pressed against mine. I can tell he is pleased to be here together. Or perhaps I’m the one pleased to be with him.
“The blood of Christ, given for you,” the minister tells me solemnly.
I tip the cup to get a good swallow.
It’s after midnight when Dad and I pull into the driveway. Something glints from the front window of the house. I look, then look again. The menorah, with six candles lit. Degan has placed it there in my absence.
On Christmas morning, we sleep in. Emily, Degan and I open our stockings together, drawing the ritual out, item by item. Santa has outdone himself, as usual. Stamps, socks, nail polish, subway tokens, SmartWool socks, a little gizmo that inflates and heats water so you can have a hot shower on a camping trip. Granny used to say that every Christmas had a theme—books one year, music the next—and as we move on to the wrapped gifts, this year’s theme emerges. I receive Claudia Roden’s Book of Jewish Cooking from Mum. Beautiful Shabbat candlesticks from Degan. Dad gives me a bound copy of our Pick family tree.
We “take a break,” which is tradition in our family, as though the opening of presents was some kind of sporting event, and move to the dining room table, which Mum has set to look like the cover of a home decorating magazine. The first course is a throwback to my girlhood in the seventies: grapefruit cut in half and dotted with a maraschino cherry. When we’re done eating, we call my cousins, who are celebrating together in the Netherlands, cooking a big traditional Christmas dinner.
Later I find an email from Eli: “Happy day of Jesus. Remember, he was a Jew. And a rebellious one.”
eighteen
ON BOXING DAY, I PLACE MY Doing Jewish textbook on the table between Mum and Dad. “It’s Hanukkah,” I remind them. “There are a couple of pages in here you can look at if you’re interested.”
Dad takes the book—he’s game. I sit beside him on the sofa as he reads, listening to his small grunts of interest. Occasionally he reads a section aloud: “ ‘It is customary to exchange gelt, or chocolate coins covered in foil wrappers.” He pauses. “We did that! With Granny and Gumper.”
Mum pipes up, “So did we. For Christmas.”
Meaning chocolate coins aren’t necessarily Jewish.
Dad reads a sentence about the tension surrounding Christmas trees in interfaith households. As though it has nothing at all in the world to do with us.
In the evening, everyone goes out. My sister is visiting an old high school friend; my parents have a cocktail party with those members of their “Tuscany Group” who don’t winter in Florida. Degan, God bless him, has had enough of my family and decides to go see a movie by himself. Dusk falls; I’m alone. I take my stash of candles out of my suitcase and try to remember which way to insert them into the menorah. Left to right? Right to left? There is a mnemonic, but I can’t make it stick in my mind.
I arrange the candles haphazardly and carry the menorah gingerly to the front window. I imagine our neighbours across the street seeing it, the ones who are also members at St. John’s, the ones whose daughter was in my Confirmation class. I picture various members of my mother’s tennis club driving past.
The ledge on the windowsill is narrow; the flames lengthen, coming dangerously close to the gauze curtains. I move the menorah to the dining room table, but the table is too far from the window and nobody will be able to see it from the street. With no good solution—I can’t be responsible for the house catching fire!—I abandon the project, blowing out the candles and retreating to the couch in the family room, where I read quietly about the war in Nigeria and pray the New Year will be better.
Sometime later, I feel a hand gripping my shoulder. “Wake up,” Degan says. “We forgot to light the menorah.”
From the kitchen, I hear the sounds of the rest of my family returning home from their evening’s activities. Emily stomps the snow from her boots. “I’m going to walk the dog,” Dad says.
Degan calls out to him. “Do you want to join us in lighting the menorah first?”
There’s a pause. I can picture Dad looking to Mum, Mum shrugging as though to say: It’s up to you.
Emily calls brightly, “I’ll join you.”
Dad says, “Sure. We will, too.” I picture Mum looking to Dad to be sure, then wiping her wet hands down the front of her apron.
We gather in the living room. Degan remembers the mnemonic for the candles: Refill from the right. Light from the left. As he arranges them, he notices they have already been lit—evidence of my aborted mission—and raises his eyebrows at me. I shrug.
He leads us in the blessings, having somehow already memorized them. I watch my parents from the corner of my eye, vigilantly checking for disapproval, but see none. After, we all sit around talking. About the struggle I am having with finding acceptance, about the historical precedents for Judaism’s closed nature. Dad jokes, “If they won’t let you join, I’ll put in a good word for you with the rabbi.”
The next day Dad and I go over the Pick family tree he has given me as a Christmas gift. One of my ancestors bears the name Israel. Direct proof. And yet, part of me still finds it difficult to believe, as though the whole thing is an elaborate fiction. A story that belongs to somebody else.
After lunch Dad produces a shoebox of old family photos I’ve never seen. I extract one of my grandparents after the war, sitting around a table with people who look like business tycoons, diplomats. Bow ties, pearls, fur stoles. The gentleman beside my grandmother has his arm around her. She holds the hand of another man, an entrepreneurial type sitting at the head of the table. My grandfather—so handsome! so Jewish!—sits across from them. What was he thinking?
J’aime ta femme—“I love your wife.”
I pull another photo from the box, of Granny’s mother, Marianne. She stands with a man in ski pants in front of snow-covered mountains, her cheeks flushed from exertion, her full lips rouged.
“Who is she with? Is that her husband, Oskar?”
Dad shakes his head. “It’s someone else. He shows up in lots of the photos. A lover, maybe.”
I peek at the image again: Marianne has her face tipped up toward her portly companion. Her eyes are locked with his. They are both laughing.
I flip the photo over. On the back is written “Marianne (Mitzi) Bauer.” And Stuckerl.
“Stuckerl?” I ask Dad.
“I think it was another nickname.”
I ask Dad what it means.
“ ‘Candy,’ ” he says. “ ‘Little sweet thing.’ ” He pauses, looking at the image again and then at me. “ ‘Piece of work.’ ”
I check my phone, wondering if Eli has called, but there’s no message. My lead cloak settles over me as I pack up the piles of Christmas gifts, preparing for the trip back to Toronto. My mother expresses herself most clearly through the material. In addition to the mass of Judaica, I have received a computer and an expensive down jacket. My stocking alone would feed a small African country. All I can think about, though, is the lamp for seasonal affective disorder that Santa has somehow forgotten. About how I will now need to order it myself. About how long it wil
l take to ship to Toronto, where I can sit under it and (hopefully, please God) start to feel human again.
As soon as I’m back in Toronto, I look online. The first site I land on promises relief from minor depression—as mine would be labelled, despite how I experience it. There are hundreds of models—desk lamps, wall lamps—in various colours and styles. I choose the first I land on, enter my credit card information. I settle in for several weeks of waiting.
That night I dream of a desert, a vast expanse of sand. I am small and inconsequential at the edge of its echoing vista. Far away, at the last reach of my vision, is a boulder.
There’s a voice in my ear: “Go out to the farthest rock where Jesus went.”
I turn but cannot see who or what has given me the instruction. I strain to see the boulder, shimmering under the blistering sun.
The voice comes again: “Go out to the farthest rock where Jesus went.”
It echoes. After that, there is silence.
nineteen
CHARLOTTE SITS IN HER CHAIR with her legs crossed, a clip in her hair, her glasses on a chain around her neck.
“That’s a very big dream,” she says. A long silence follows, during which we can hear the soft thunk of sleet against the window. “What do you think it’s about?” she asks finally.
I pause. “Well, the obvious. That I’m wrestling with my religious identity.”
“And?”
“The boulder was so far away. I could see it, but I still have far to go.”
“Isn’t that the title of the book you’re writing? Far to Go?”
I pause. “Yes. But …”
“But what?”
“I don’t really think …”
“The subconscious mind is incredibly astute,” she says.
She has lit a beeswax candle—I catch the smell of its waxy sweetness. She searches my face. “Jesus, too, withdrew at certain times to contemplate his identity. He went out to the desert and was tempted by Satan.”
I give a half smile and spin Granny’s wedding ring on my finger. “What exactly did he contemplate?”
“Whether he was half God.”
“Same here!”
But Charlotte doesn’t laugh. She says, “In psychological terms, Jesus is a symbol of rebirth. Of redemption.”
“Even for a Jew?”
“Regardless of the tradition of the dreamer.”
“So I’m being reborn?”
She makes a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat.
I tell Charlotte that it feels like my skin is pulled back, like all my nerves are exposed. Everything is cold, or made of glass, and it is too bright—I start to cry.
“Even the beautiful things hurt,” I say through my tears. “Especially the beautiful things.”
Charlotte recommends “being small.” I have a good brain, she says, but it is also my defence. It is possible that what I am going through right now is not something I can understand.
But I want to understand. Eli, Judaism: I need to make sense of it to make the pain go away. Tears are streaming down my cheeks as I speak. “I know it’s just projection—”
“Yes,” she interrupts. “But a projection is all there is. It’s the mind’s only way to bring subconscious material into consciousness.”
I look at her blankly.
“Not ‘just’ a projection,” she says, making quotes in the air around the word just. “A projection is extremely intense and powerful.”
Charlotte suggests again that I should submit. Be still, bear it. Let the despair really wash over me.
“And in the meantime?”
“Tend to your home,” she says. “Do laundry. Make soup.”
“Make soup?”
Rock, rock.
I have a book of poetry about to come out, launch invitations to send, student papers I’ve ignored, six million things tugging at my sleeves.
I could lose myself entirely in that crowd of needy hands.
Charlotte’s point is taken. I will make soup.
After the session I lie down with Degan on the evening bed, snow piling up in the street outside our window. He sings me a beautiful song about a poor boy, cold and hungry at the side of the road. Partway through, I realize the boy is Jesus.
“Do you want me to stop?” Degan asks.
I press my face into his chest and shake my head. I don’t want him to stop. Degan and Jesus: the ones I already have.
The week between Christmas and New Year’s is a strange kind of limbo. The main event finished but the resolution not yet arrived. My parents’ wedding anniversary falls during this stretch of time. They’ve been married for thirty-five years. Several lifetimes.
Degan asks again if I’m ready to set a date for our wedding, but despite my feeling close to him, something in me balks. “Let’s look at our calendars in January,” I say, trying to stall.
We go downtown to the Boxing Week sales. Degan picks up some new clothes for work: a sweater vest, a casual blazer. At the checkout counter he grabs some boxer shorts. When we get home, we find they are patterned with Christmas trees. “I’ll take them back,” he says.
Later, at contact improv, I lie limply in the centre of the polished studio floor. A woman with blond braids and leg warmers rolls me over onto my side. Pokes at me with her big toe. Leans in with the full weight of her shoulder. The more she tries to engage me in the dance, the heavier my body becomes. I move off to the side of the dance floor and rest against the heaters, watching. Slowly the dancers get started. The ones become twos, the twos become fours and fives. Soon there is a big pile of bodies in the centre of the room. Legs sticking out, arms at odd angles. I try not to think about Auschwitz.
I read Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky and the remarkable Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald. I read both volumes of Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir Maus. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink and, for the second time, Styron’s Sophie’s Choice. Styron’s daughter has written a memoir about her father’s depression, what it was like to grow up in the shadow of such a literary lion, and I gobble that book up, too. I read The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, an American writer who is exactly my age. The pathos in these books is so palpable, as is the tragedy of the characters’ lives. My own novel feels stilted and unformed. I have not understood the insidious loss of the Holocaust. Or rather, I have understood all too well but am unable to render a new impression of a subject matter that is so well-worn.
Who are my characters?
They are no one.
Wrong again.
They are my family, and I have failed them.
They are bits of crumpled paper blowing down a laneway at dusk. They are flecks of ash on a dark night in Poland, drifting up to mix with the stars.
I wake in the middle of the night and tiptoe across the soft carpet, upstairs to my computer. There’s a green light beside Eli’s name in gmail. “You’re up late,” I write. “How’re things?”
“Comme ci comme ça. You?”
“Meh,” I write. And then: “You’re leaving soon, hey? Let’s get together. Sunday?”
I’m still hoping he’ll introduce me to his mother, but I can’t tell him that, can’t quite let him know what I imagine he could give me.
I press Send and sit at the computer answering other emails, waiting for Eli’s reply. After ten minutes the green light beside his name turns red and then blinks off altogether.
The next morning his answer is there: “I saw your note. I’m not trying to blow things off. I’m leaving the country in 10 days and have a ton of stuff to do. I’d like to see you.” A space. “But I’m busy on Sunday.”
While reading this last line, something blooms in my chest, a bright spreading stain of awareness. I’m looking in the wrong place. I’m looking outside, when I know full well the answers I need are inside me. It’s just so much harder to find them there.
Shabbat arrives over and over, like a suitcase abandoned on a baggage carousel. We now call it “24 Hours Unplugged, Jewish Styl
e.” On Friday evening, Degan guards the hearth while I go out into the darkness, to synagogue. At the car I turn back and see two high flames from our candles: one for him and one for me.
The temple at Holy Blossom is filled with adults. It’s still “winter” break, and the families with children must all be away skiing or in Florida. I sit beside Debra. I have managed to memorize the chorus of “L’cha Dodi,” the liturgical song sung at dusk to welcome the Sabbath bride, but when the time comes, the congregants bust out into a tune I don’t recognize.
There are, I will learn, as many ways to sing “L’cha Dodi” as there are Inuit words for snow.
One thing remains consistent: in the final verse, we all stand to welcome her, the invisible bride whose presence means the Sabbath has begun. Debra gestures to a woman who happens to be entering the sanctuary; she’s wearing a purple cloche hat and discreetly stuffing her cell phone in her purse. “There she is!”
“You know her?” I ask.
“Of course. The Sabbath bride.”
I laugh but am grateful when the verse ends and we sit back down. All the standing: it’s exhausting.
The rabbi’s “sermon” is a colloquial lecture on a book about Yiddish he’s been reading. He tells us about the expression Nisht getoygen, nisht gefloygen, which translates roughly to “It doesn’t fly; it doesn’t even get up.” Meaning that something is completely unbelievable.
The rabbi uses the expression in reference to the Christian belief in transubstantiation: how the bread is literally transformed into the body of Christ during Communion, and the wine to his blood. The ridiculousness of this idea.
The congregation dissolves into laughter.
I lean into Debra, catching her eye. I can tell from her face that she, too, is hurt, but she braces herself. “Remember,” she whispers, “it’s a defensiveness born of persecution.”
I think of the list of Jewish expulsions that Jordan has sent me. Beginning in the year 19 CE: Rome. The Frankish Kingdom. Germany. England, France. Warsaw. Spain. Sicily. Lithuania. Portugal. Prague.
