Finding the Worm

by Mark Goldblatt

  It was the Thursday after New Year’s, late in the afternoon, and the five of us—Quentin, Howie, Eric, Shlomo, and me—were walking up Parsons Boulevard to Hebrew school. Lonnie wasn’t with us, because he’d gotten bar mitzvahed a couple of months before, so he didn’t have to go anymore. (It always feels weird when Lonnie’s not there. He’s kind of the glue that holds the gang together.)

  We were halfway to Gates of Prayer, just crossing Northern Boulevard, when Eric asked us if we’d remembered to get tzedakah dollars from our moms. Tzedakah, in case you don’t know, is charity money the rabbis collect for poor people. Except in Hebrew school it’s not a choice. You have to cough up that dollar every week, and then you have to walk up to the front of the classroom, with the rest of the kids watching, and you have to fold the dollar in half and slide it into the tzedakah box—or else you get a note home to your parents.

  So Eric asked us if we’d remembered, and Quentin got this nervous look on his face, and right off we knew he’d forgotten his tzedakah dollar. None of us had an extra one, so it looked like Quentin was going to get that note home. Except then he pulled out the twenty-dollar bill.

  “What good is that?” Shlomo said. “You think the rabbi’s going to make change?”

  “Then I’ll just put in the whole thing,” Quentin said.

  I’m not sure who said what, because the sentences got jumbled together, but Howie and Shlomo and Eric shouted over one another, “You’re out of your mind!” and “You’ve got to be kidding!” and “Over my dead body!”

  Quentin laughed, but it was a panicky laugh.

  “Look,” I said, “why don’t we just go into the deli and get change for the twenty?”

  That’s what we did. I took Quentin’s twenty, and the five of us walked into the Parsons Deli and up to the counter. I did the talking, and the old guy behind the cash register was shaking his head before I even was done asking the question. “No change without a purchase,” he said.

  “C’mon!” Howie cried. “What’s the big deal?”

  “Either buy something, or get out of my store.”

  So I glanced around and saw a box of Bazooka bubble gum. One piece for one penny. I grabbed one piece and gave the guy the twenty-dollar bill.

  “You got to buy something else,” he said.

  I looked up at him and said in a soft voice, “I think that’s against the law.”

  Which I was pretty sure was true.

  He stared me down. I looked him in the eyes, but I tried to do it in a hopeful way, not an angry way.

  “Give me the damn twenty,” he said.

  He took the bill, opened the cash register, and handed me back a ten-dollar bill, a five-dollar bill, and five ones.

  “Don’t we owe you a penny for the bubble gum?”

  “It’s on the house,” he said. “Now get out of here.”

  Problem solved, right?

  So a couple of hours later, we’re sitting in Rabbi Salzberg’s classroom, and we’re getting near the end of class, and he pulls out the tzedakah box from the bottom drawer of his desk and sets it down on top of the desk. As soon as he does that, we all reach for our dollars, and that starts the parade up to the front of the room, one by one, in alphabetical order.

  When Quentin’s turn comes up, he’s got this big smile on his face, and I’m feeling pretty good about that smile, because it was my idea to get change at the deli … except then, as he passes by my desk, I notice he’s got the ten-dollar bill in his hand instead of a one. I reach out to grab him, but it’s too late. He’s out of reach. I call his name under my breath, but he can’t hear me. Quentin is still smiling as he folds the ten-dollar bill in half and slides it into the tzedakah box.

  I thought Howie was going to strangle him on the walk home from Gates of Prayer. Eric and Shlomo were yelling at Quentin and cracking up at the same time. You should have seen Lonnie’s reaction when we told him what had happened. He was rolling on the floor, gasping for breath. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him crack up so hard. I mean, we razzed Quentin for months afterward. None of it bothered him. The guy is just good-natured.

  He kept saying how he still had ten dollars, and that was more money than he’d ever had before. You know, to this day, I have no idea what he did with that ten dollars.

  Except here’s the thing: the more I think about it, the more I think Quentin did it on purpose. It’s nothing I can say for sure. But he always got this look on his face when we were arguing over what to do with his twenty-dollar bill. It was like the entire thing made him feel weird. I think maybe he meant to get rid of all the arguing in the tzedakah box.

  January 5, 1970

  Good Citizenship

  Here’s the second essay on good citizenship I wrote for Principal Salvatore:

  Last week, I learned that good citizenship is more than just writing “no” over and over, which shows a negative attitude. So: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. In conclusion, good citizenship is saying “yes” all the time.

  I slid the paper under the door of Principal Salvatore’s office as soon as I got to school, and Miss Medina handed it back to me an hour later. Principal Salvatore had written on the back:

  NO. Try again.

  January 6, 1970

  The Big One-Three

  Dad woke me up this morning just after sunrise. He does that every year on my birthday. He sat down hard on the side of my bed, which bounced me about a foot off the mattress, and I went from fast asleep to wide awake in that second I was in the air.

  The first thing I saw, after my eyes focused, was him grinning down at me. Then he said, “I tell you, Jules, you don’t look a day over twelve!”

  That’s his routine, every birthday, as far back as I can remember. That same dumb joke, year after year, except the number keeps getting bigger. I don’t mind, to be honest. It’s the only day he does it, and it seems to mean a lot to him.

  I yawned and said, “What did I get?”

  “You’re thirteen, and you’re still expecting a present?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right, kid, I’ll bring you home a pack of Camels.”

  “Good enough,” I said.

  He snatched the pillow out from under my head, which sent me rolling over. Then he clobbered me across the shoulders and back with it, just kidding around. After that, he got up and left for work.

  Now here’s what you need to know about my dad: he’s maybe the most regular guy on the planet. Nothing ever changes with him. It’s not a bad thing, but it also makes him real predictable. Like, for example, he always buys presents for me and Amelia about a week before our actual birthdays and always hides them in the same place … on the floor in the back of the closet in his and my mom’s bedroom. He stashes them underneath a pile of dress shirts he doesn’t wear anymore because he sweated through the collars. So every year, a few days before my birthday, I sneak into the closet and check underneath the pile of shirts to find out what he got me.

  What he got me this year is a Bobby Murcer–autograph baseball glove.

  I’ll act real surprised when he hands it across the table tonight after dinner. That’s part of the routine too. Plus, it is a great present. He knows how bad I need a new glove, and he knows Bobby Murcer is my guy. I’ve followed him since
he was a rookie in 1965. Even after he got drafted into the army, I waited two years until he got out, and then I followed him again. I even kept a scrapbook the first couple of years—I pasted in the newspaper box score of every game he hit a home run. So, yeah, my dad couldn’t have done much better with his present. And any other year, getting a Bobby Murcer baseball glove would have been the highlight of my day.

  But Quentin totally stole my dad’s thunder.

  It was around three-thirty when the telephone rang. Amelia raced into the kitchen to answer it, which is what she does whenever the phone rings, and then she let out a shriek, but a second later I heard her apologizing in a soft voice. That got my curiosity up. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, though, so after a minute, I forgot about it. The next thing I knew, she was standing outside the door to my room, which is as far as the phone cord stretches, smiling ear to ear, telling me I had a call.

  “Who is it?” I said.

  She handed the phone to me and stepped back to watch my reaction.

  I stared at it for a second, then brought it to my ear and said, “Hello?”

  Then came a whispery voice I didn’t even recognize. “Jules?”

  “Yeah …”

  “It’s Quentin.”

  It was one of those times when your brain short-circuits, when you want to say ten things at once, but nothing comes out of your mouth. I couldn’t spit out a single word. I might as well have put the phone to my armpit and made farting noises—that’s how shocked I was. I mean, the last time I saw the guy, he had that tube-thing in his mouth.

  After about ten seconds of gagging and sputtering, I came up with “How do you feel?”

  “Not too bad.”

  “So … er … is the food okay?”

  Amelia slugged me in the chest when I said that. Not hard—she wasn’t mad. But she was staring at me with a real frustrated look, as if to say, That’s it? That’s the best you’ve got? That’s all you have to say to the guy? It wasn’t all I had to say. That’s for sure. But I wasn’t going to get gushy over the phone, which I knew was what she wanted. That’s something girls never seem to figure out, not even if they’re seniors in high school, like Amelia. Guys don’t get gushy with one another. That’s how it works. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, but that’s just how it is. If I got gushy, I would’ve felt wrong afterward. Not only that: Quentin would have felt wrong afterward. He would’ve felt like I was getting gushy because he was sick, which would have reminded him of how sick he was. Why would I do that to him just to make Amelia happy?

  “It’s pretty good,” he whispered. “I got orange Jell-O.”

  “I got a Bobby Murcer baseball glove. I mean, I didn’t get it yet. But my dad’s going to give it to me tonight. He hid it in the back of the closet, but I found it. Today’s my birthday.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah, I guess that’s why you called.”

  He gave a whispery laugh that almost made me bawl. “Dope!”

  “We pushed back my bar mitzvah.…”

  “Why?”

  “Because of you. Because you’re sick.”

  Amelia slugged me again, but I just ignored her.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” he said.

  “No, I wanted to. We all wanted to, even Amelia. It was like a family decision.”

  There was a long pause. “How’d your dad get Bobby Murcer to sign the glove?”

  “Murcer didn’t sign it himself,” I said. “It’s just a glove that’s got his name on it.”

  “Oh.”

  “Dope!”

  That made Quentin laugh again, even softer than before, and then he coughed.

  “If Murcer had actually signed it,” I said, “I’d never be able to use it, because I wouldn’t want to mess it up. I mean, I’d keep it around the house. But then I’d still need a glove I could play with.”

  “That makes sense.…”

  Quentin’s mom got on the phone at that point and said the conversation was tiring him out, so he had to rest. I told her I understood—which I did—and said goodbye, and I heard her tell him goodbye for me, and the next thing I heard was the click and buzz of her hanging up.

  Amelia took the phone from my hand, because I was still kind of in shock, and she said, “That’s a pretty superb birthday present, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You really love that kid, don’t you?”

  “C’mon, Amelia!”

  “I’m just teasing you, Jules. You don’t have to say it to me.”

  “I’m not going to say it to you.”

  “But at least say it to yourself,” she said.

  “What’s the point of saying it to myself?”

  “Because if you can say it to yourself, you can say it to Quentin.”

  “You just want to hear me say it.”

  “He’s real sick, Julian—”

  “He’s getting better! You just spoke to him yourself!”

  “Don’t take that chance,” she said. “Say what needs to be said.”

  “This is stupid.…”

  “If you don’t, and something happens, you’ll regret it the rest of your life. Trust me on this one.”

  By then, I’d heard enough. I stepped back into my room, snatched my coat from the hook on the wall, and headed outside to find Lonnie. I wanted to tell him I’d talked to Quentin while the thing was still fresh in my mind.

  January 10, 1970

  Saturday-Morning Services

  Today would’ve been my bar mitzvah, the day I was supposed to become a man … if it hadn’t gotten pushed back until the end of May. So my dad got it in his head that I should go to Saturday services at Gates of Prayer. Alone. Because, I guess, that’s what men do. Except no way was he going to get up early, put on a suit, and spend the morning in temple.

  I asked Lonnie if he wanted to come, and you can guess what his answer was.

  So off I went at eight-fifteen, in a blazer and dress pants, just as the sun had started to warm up the air. I walked real slow, squinting into the sun. Once I got to temple, of course, that was the end of sunlight for the next hour and a half—an hour and a half of squirming on a hard wooden pew, staring into a back-to-front prayer book, and keeping my yawns to myself. Unfortunately, Lonnie’s mom noticed me walk in. I’d been planning to sit in the back row, where at least I could get in a couple of good stretches, but she stood up and waved me forward. Then she gave me a long hug, like she hadn’t seen me in a year, and made me sit next to her in the front row.

  If there’s one thing worse than sitting through Saturday-morning services, it’s sitting through them with Mrs. Fine. I don’t mean that in a bad way. She’s my favorite of my friends’ moms, and I’d say that even if she weren’t so generous with Mallomars. Plus, I know the Jewish stuff gets to her on account of what happened during World War II. But that’s why sitting with her is so awkward. It’s like sitting next to a bag of cats, the way she yowls and moans the Hebrew words, the way she hunches up her shoulders and shakes, the way she rocks back and forth with her eyes closed, the way she sobs to herself, and meanwhile you’re right there next to her, faking like you know what’s going on, feeling people’s eyes on you, wanting to pat her on the back and tell her it’s going to be all right, that the service is going to be over in another hour … except you know, because of how worked up she gets, she wouldn’t hear you regardless.

  So, yeah, sitting next to Mrs. Fine in temple is real awkward. On the other hand, it does make you think deep. It makes you think about what happened to her, and it makes you realize how good you’ve got it. It’s the same thing, in a way, with Quentin’s tumor. It makes you feel guilty, almost, on account of he’s sick and you’re not. It’s like—I don’t even know how to explain it. It just hits you. Like you’re running down the block, running to get home for dinner, and the wind is whistling in your ears, and you’re taking deep breaths, and the air just comes and goes like it’s nothing, and then, out of no
where, you remember Quentin is stuck in that hospital bed, with those tubes going in and out of him, and it just doesn’t seem fair.

  You think about stuff like that, sitting in temple next to Mrs. Fine, because you can’t not think about it. It seems like the natural thing to do. So I figured as long as I was there, I might as well get into the spirit of the thing and pray a little. I said a quick prayer, which I felt bad about afterward, because, looking back, it’s not the nicest prayer. But here’s what I prayed: I prayed that when Quentin got out of the hospital, he wouldn’t get all religious like Mrs. Fine.

  It was maybe another ten minutes until Rabbi Salzberg said the last “amen” and the service ended. I jumped up and was about to cheese it. But then, a second later, I felt Mrs. Fine’s hand take hold of mine, and she lifted my hand to her lips and kissed it. It felt wet, the kiss, because it had tears mixed in with it. She looked down at me afterward, and her eyes were tearing up, and she said, “You’re a good boy, Julian.”

  I nodded. What else could I do? But I was thinking: Tell that to Principal Salvatore.

  Then she let go of me. I grabbed my overcoat and walked away, not too fast but not too slow either. The side door of the temple was open, and sunlight was pouring into the place, and I was maybe ten feet from fresh air and freedom. But at the last second, Rabbi Salzberg shuffled to the edge of the stage and called out my name: “Mr. Twerski!” He was close enough, and enough people were standing between us, that I couldn’t pretend not to hear him.

  I turned and called back, “Yes, Rabbi?”

  “Come here, Mr. Twerski.”

  I took a couple of steps toward the stage, but then I heard my name again. It came from outside. I glanced over my shoulder, toward the side door, and was blinded by the sun. But I knew the voice. It was Lonnie’s. “Hey, Jules!”