What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories

by Nathan Englander

  “Oh, she was always like this in high school,” Shoshana says. “Sneak one drink, and she started to cry.”

  “Alcohol is a known depressive,” Yerucham says. And for that, for stating facts like that, he’s straight on his way to being disliked again.

  “You want to know what used to get her going, what would make her truly happy?” Shoshana says. And I tell you, I don’t see it coming. I’m as blindsided as Deb was with that numbers story.

  “It was getting high,” Shoshana says. “That’s what always did it. Smoking up, it would just make her laugh for hours and hours.”

  “Oh my God,” Deb says, but not to Shoshana. She’s pointing at me, likely because I look as startled as I feel. “Look at my big bad secular husband,” Deb says. “He really can’t handle it. He can’t handle his wife’s having any history of naughtiness at all—Mr. Liberal Open-Minded.” And to me, she says, “How much more chaste a wife can you dream of than a modern-day Yeshiva girl who stayed a virgin until twenty-one? Honestly,” she says, “what did you think Shoshana was going to say was so much fun?”

  “Honestly-honestly?” I say. “I don’t want to. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Let’s hear,” Mark says. “We’re all friends here. New friends, but friends.”

  “I thought you were—,” I say, and I stop. “You’ll kill me.”

  “Say it!” Deb says, positively glowing.

  “Honestly, I thought you were going to say it was something like competing in the Passover Nut Roll, or making sponge cake. Something like that.” I hang my head. And Shoshana and Deb are just laughing so hard, they can’t breathe. They’re grabbing at each other, so that I can’t tell, really, if they’re holding each other up or pulling each other down. I’m afraid one of them’s going to fall.

  “I can’t believe you told him about the nut roll,” Shoshana says.

  “And I can’t believe,” Deb says, “you just told my husband of twenty-two years how much we used to get high. I haven’t touched a joint since before we were married,” she says. “Have we, honey? Have we smoked since we got married?”

  “No,” I say. “It’s been a very long time.”

  “So, come on, Shosh. When was it? When was the last time you smoked?”

  Now, I know I mentioned the beard on Mark. But I don’t know if I mentioned how hairy a guy he is. It grows, that thing, right up to his eyeballs. Like having eyebrows on top and bottom both. It’s really something. So when Deb asks the question, the two of them, Shosh and Yuri, they’re basically giggling like children, and I can tell, in the little part that shows, in the bit of skin I can see, that Mark’s eyelids and earlobes are in full blush.

  “When Shoshana said we drink to get through the days,” Mark says, “she was kidding about the drinking.”

  “We don’t drink much,” Shoshana says.

  “It’s smoking that she means,” he says.

  “We smoke,” Lauren says, reconfirming.

  “Cigarettes?” Deb says.

  “We still get high,” Shoshana says. “I mean, all the time.”

  “Hassidim!” Deb screams. “You’re not allowed! There’s no way.”

  “Everyone does in Israel. It’s like the sixties there,” Mark says. “Like a revolution. It’s the highest country in the world. Worse than Holland, and India, and Thailand put together. Worse than anywhere, even Argentina—though they may have us tied.”

  “Well, maybe that’s why the kids aren’t interested in alcohol.”

  And Yerucham admits that maybe this is so.

  “Do you want to get high now?” Deb says. And we all three look at her. Me, with surprise. And those two just with straight longing.

  “We didn’t bring,” Shoshana says. “Though it’s pretty rare anyone at customs peeks under the wig.”

  “Maybe you guys can find your way into the glaucoma underground over at Carmel Lake,” I say. “I’m sure that place is rife with it.”

  “That’s funny,” Mark says.

  “I’m funny,” I say, now that we’re all getting on.

  “We’ve got pot,” Deb says.

  “We do?” I say. “I don’t think we do.”

  Deb looks at me and bites at the cuticle on her pinkie.

  “You’re not secretly getting high all these years?” I say, feeling honestly like maybe I’m about to get a whole list of deceptions. I really don’t feel well at all.

  “Our son,” Deb says. “He has pot.”

  “Our son?”

  “Trevor,” she says.

  “Yes,” I say. “I know which one.”

  · · ·

  It’s a lot for one day, that kind of news. And it feels to me a lot like betrayal. Like my wife’s old secret and my son’s new secret are wound up together and that I’ve somehow been wronged. Also, I’m not one to recover quickly from any kind of slight from Deb—not when there are other people around. I really need to talk stuff out. Some time alone with Deb, even five minutes, would fix it. But it’s super-apparent that she doesn’t need any time alone with me. She doesn’t seem troubled at all. What she seems is focused. She’s busy at the counter, using a paper tampon wrapper to roll up a joint.

  “It’s an emergency preparedness method we came up with in high school,” Shoshana says. “The things teenage girls will do when they’re desperate.”

  “And we were desperate,” Deb says, as if everything’s already funny. “Do you remember that nice boy from Y.H.S.Q. that we used to smoke in front of?”

  “I can picture him,” Shoshana says. “But not the name.”

  “He’d just watch us,” Deb says. “There’d be six or seven of us in a circle, girls and boys not touching—we were so religious. Isn’t that crazy?” Deb is talking to me, as Shoshana and Mark don’t think it’s crazy at all. “The only place we touched was passing the joint, at the thumbs. And this boy, we had a nickname for him.”

  “ ‘Passover’!” Shoshana yells.

  “Yes,” Deb says, “that’s it. All we ever called him was ‘Passover.’ Because every time the joint got to him, he’d just pass it over to the next one. Passover Rand,” Deb says. “Now I remember.”

  Shoshana takes the joint and lights it with a match, sucking in deep. “It’s a miracle when I remember anything these days,” she says. “I’m telling you. It’s the kids. After my first was born, I forgot half of everything I knew. And then half again with each one after. Ten kids later, it’s amazing when I remember to blow out a match after I light it.” She drops the one she’s holding into the sink, and it makes that little hiss. “Just last night, I woke up in a panic. I couldn’t remember if there were fifty-two cards in a deck or fifty-two weeks in a year. The recall errors—I’m up all night worrying over them, just waiting for the Alzheimer’s to kick in.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Mark tells her. “It’s only everyone on one side of your family that has it.”

  “That’s true,” she says, passing her husband the joint. “The other side is blessed only with dementia. Anyway, which is it? Weeks or cards?”

  “Same, same,” Mark says, taking a hit.

  When it’s Deb’s turn, she holds the joint and looks at me, like I’m supposed to nod or give her permission in some husbandly anxiety-absolving way. And I just can’t take it anymore. Instead of saying, “Go ahead,” or “Let’s do it,” I pretty much bark at Deb. “When were you going to tell me about our son?” I say. “When was that going to happen? How long have you known?”

  At that, Deb takes a long hit, and holds it deep, like an old pro.

  “Really, Deb. How could you not tell me you knew?”

  Deb walks over and hands me the joint. She blows the smoke in my face, not aggressive, just blowing.

  “I’ve only known five days,” she says. “I was going to tell you, obviously. I just wasn’t sure how, or if I should talk to Trevy first, maybe give him a chance,” she says.

  “A chance to what?” I ask.

  “To let him keep it as a secret be
tween us. To let him know he could have my trust, could be forgiven, if he promised to stop.”

  “But he’s the son,” I say. “I’m the father. Even if it’s a secret with him, it should be a double secret between me and you. I should always get to know—but pretend not to know—any secret with him.”

  “Do that double part again,” Mark says, trying to follow. But I ignore him.

  “That’s how it goes,” I say to Deb. “That’s how it’s always been.” And because I’m desperate and unsure, I follow it up with “Hasn’t it?”

  I mean, we really trust each other, Deb and I. And I can’t remember feeling like so much has hung on one question in a long, long time. I’m trying to read her face, and something really complex is going on, some formulation. And then she just sits right there on the floor at my feet.

  “Oh my God,” she says. “I’m so fucking high. Like instantly. Like, like,” and then she starts laughing. “Like, Mike,” she says. “Like, kike,” she says, turning completely serious. “Oh my God, I’m really messed up.”

  “We should have warned you,” Shoshana says.

  As she says this, I’m holding my first hit in, and already trying to fight off the paranoia that comes rushing behind that statement. Mark takes the joint back and passes it straight to Shoshana, respecting the order of things.

  “Warn us what?” I say, my voice high, and the smoke still sweet in my nose.

  “This isn’t your father’s marijuana,” he says. “The THC levels. It’s like, I don’t know, the stuff from our childhood? One hit of this new hydroponic stuff, it’s like if maybe you smoked a pound of the stuff we had when we were kids.”

  “I feel it,” I say. And I do, in a deep, deep way. And I sit down with Deb on the floor and take her hands. I feel nice. Though I’m not sure if I thought that or said it, so I try it again, making sure it’s out loud. “I feel nice,” I say.

  “I found it in the laundry hamper,” Deb says. “That’s where I got the pot.”

  “In the hamper?” Shoshana says.

  “Leave it to a teenage boy to think that’s the best place to hide something,” Deb says. “His clean clothes show up folded in his room, and it never occurs to him that someone empties the hamper. To him, it’s the loneliest, most forgotten space in the world. Point is,” Deb says, “I found an Altoids tin at the bottom, stuffed full. Just brimming with pot.” Deb gives my hands a squeeze. “Are we good now?”

  “We’re good,” I say. And it feels like we’re a team again, like it’s us against them. Because when Shoshana passes Deb the joint, Deb says, “Are you sure you guys are allowed to smoke pot that comes out of a tin that held non-kosher candy? I really don’t know if that’s okay.” And it’s just exactly the kind of thing I’m thinking right then.

  “She’s on Facebook, too,” I say. “That can’t be allowed, either. These are very bad Hassidim,” I say, and we laugh at that. We laugh hard.

  “First of all, we’re not eating it. We’re smoking it. And even so, it’s cold contact, so it’s probably all right either way,” Shoshana says.

  “ ‘Cold contact?’ ” I say.

  “It’s a thing,” Shoshana says. “Just forget about it and get up off the floor. Chop-chop.” And each of them offers us a hand and gets us standing. “Come, sit back at the table,” Shoshana says. So once we’re up, we’re back down again at the table.

  “I’ll tell you,” Mark says. “That’s got to be the number-one most annoying thing about being Hassidic in the outside world. Worse than the rude stuff that gets said is the constant policing by civilians. I’m telling you, everywhere we go, people are checking on us. Ready to make some sort of liturgical citizen’s arrest.”

  “Strangers!” Shoshana says. “Just the other day, down here, on the way from the airport. Yuri pulled into a McDonald’s to pee, and some guy in a trucker hat came up to him as he went in and said, ‘You allowed to go in there, brother?’ Just like that.”

  “Not true!” Deb says.

  “True,” Shoshana says.

  “It’s not that I don’t see the fun in that,” Mark says. “The allure. You know, we’ve got Mormons in Jerusalem. They’ve got a base there. A seminary. The rule is—the deal with the government—they can have their place, but they can’t do outreach. No proselytizing. Anyway, I do some business with one of their guys.”

  “From Utah?” Deb says.

  “From Idaho. His name is Jebediah, for real—do you believe it?”

  “No, Yerucham and Shoshana,” I say. “Jebediah is a very strange name.” Mark rolls his eyes at that, and hands me what’s left of the joint. Without even asking, he gets up and gets the tin and reaches into his wife’s purse for another tampon. He’s confident now, at home in my home. And I’m a little less comfortable with this than with the white bread, with a guest coming into the house and smoking up all our son’s pot. Deb must be thinking something similar, as she says, “After this story, I’m going to text Trev and make sure he’s not coming back anytime soon.”

  “That’d be good,” I say.

  “Actually, I’ll tell him to come straight home after practice. Or I’ll tell him he can have dinner with his friends but that he better be here by nine, not a minute later. Then he’ll beg for ten. If I tell him he has to be home no matter what, we’re safe.”

  “Okay,” I say. “A good plan.”

  “So when Jeb’s at our house, when he comes by to eat and pours himself a Coke, I do that same religious-police thing. I can’t resist. I say, ‘Hey, Jeb, you allowed to have that? You supposed to be drinking Coke, or what?’ I say it every time. Somehow, I can’t resist. People don’t mind breaking their own rules, but they’re real strict about someone else’s.”

  “So are they allowed to have Coke?” Deb says.

  “I don’t know,” Mark says. “All Jeb ever says back is, ‘You’re thinking of coffee, and mind your own business, either way.’ ”

  “What happens in Jerusalem, stays in Jerusalem,” I say. But they must not have that commercial there, because neither of them thinks that’s funny at all.

  And then my Deb. She just can’t help herself. “You heard about the scandal? The Mormons going through the Holocaust list.”

  “Like in Dead Souls,” I say, explaining, “Like in the Gogol book, but real.”

  “Do you think we read that?” Mark says. “As Hassidim, or before?” He passes me the joint as he says this, so it’s both a little aggressive and funny at the same time. And then, because one doesn’t preclude the other, he pours himself a drink.

  “They took the records of the dead,” Deb says, “and they started running through them. They took these people who died as Jews and started converting them into Mormons. Converting the six million against their will.”

  “And this bothers you?” Mark says. “This is what keeps an American Jew up at night?”

  “What does that mean?” Deb says.

  “It means—,” Mark says.

  But Shoshana interrupts him. “Don’t tell them what it means, Yuri. Just leave it unmeant.”

  “We can handle it,” I say. “We are interested, even, in handling it. This stuff,” I say, pointing in the general direction of the Altoids tin, “has ripened our minds. We’re primed to entertain even the highest concepts.”

  “High concepts, because we’re high,” Deb says, earnest, not joking at all.

  “Your son, he seems like a nice boy.”

  “Do not talk about their son,” Shoshana says.

  “Do not talk about our son,” Deb says. This time I reach across and lay a hand on her elbow.

  “Talk,” I say.

  “He does not,” Mark says, “seem Jewish to me.”

  “How can you say that?” Deb says. “What is wrong with you?” But Deb’s upset draws less attention than my response. I am laughing so hard that everyone turns toward me.

  “What?” Mark says.

  “Jewish to you?” I say. “The hat, the beard, the blocky shoes. A lot of pressure,
I’d venture, to look Jewish to you. Like say, maybe, Ozzy Osbourne, or the guys from Kiss, like them telling Paul Simon, saying, ‘You do not look like a musician to me.’ ”

  “It is not about the outfit,” Mark says. “It’s about building life in a vacuum. Do you know what I saw on the drive over here? Supermarket, supermarket, adult bookstore, supermarket, supermarket, firing range.”

  “Floridians do like their guns and porn,” I say. “And their supermarkets.”

  “Oh my God,” Deb says. “That’s like your ‘Goldberg, Goldberg—Atta’ thing. Just the same, but different words.”

  “He likes that rhythm,” Shoshana says. “He does that a lot.”

  “What I’m trying to say, whether you want to take it seriously or not, is that you can’t build Judaism only on the foundation of one terrible crime. It is about this obsession with the Holocaust as a necessary sign of identity. As your only educational tool. Because for the children, there is no connection otherwise. Nothing Jewish that binds.”

  “Wow, that’s offensive,” Deb says. “And close-minded. There is such a thing as Jewish culture. One can live a culturally rich life.”

  “Not if it’s supposed to be a Jewish life. Judaism is a religion. And with religion comes ritual. Culture is nothing. Culture is some construction of the modern world. And because of that, it is not fixed; it is ever-changing, and a weak way to bind generations. It’s like taking two pieces of metal, and instead of making a nice weld, you hold them together with glue.”

  “What does that even mean?” Deb says. “Practically.”

  Mark raises a finger to make his point, to educate. “Do you know why in Israel all the buses and trucks, why all the taxis, even, are Mercedes?”

  “Because they give you a big guilt-based discount?” I say. “Or maybe because Mercedes is the best at building vehicles for the transport of Jews—they have a certain knack?”

  “Because in Israel we are sound, solid Jews, and so it is nothing, even right after the war, for us to drive German cars and turn on our German Siemens radios to listen to the Hebrew news. We don’t need to impose some brand-based apartheid, to busy ourselves with symbolic efforts to keep our memories in place. Because we live exactly as our parents lived before the war. And this serves us in all things, in our relationships, too, in our marriages and parenting.”