100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

by Lorrie Moore

  Deb looks crestfallen. She was expecting something empowering. Some story with which to educate Trevor, to reaffirm her belief in the humanity that, from inhumanity, forms.

  But me, I love that kind of story. I’m starting to take a real shine to these two, and not just because I’m suddenly feeling sloshed.

  “Good story, Yuri,” I say, copying his wife. “Yerucham, that one’s got zing.”

  Yerucham hoists himself up from the table, looking proud. He checks the label of our white bread on the counter, making sure it’s kosher. He takes a slice, pulls off the crust, and rolls the white part against the countertop with the palm of his hand, making a little ball. He comes over and pours himself a shot and throws it back. Then he eats that crazy dough ball. Just tosses it in his mouth, as if it’s the bottom of his own personal punctuation mark—you know, to underline his story.

  “Is that good?” I say.

  “Try it,” he says. He goes to the counter and pitches me a slice of white bread, and says, “But first pour yourself a shot.”

  I reach for the bottle and find that Deb’s got her hands around it, and her head’s bowed down, like the bottle is anchoring her, keeping her from tipping back.

  “Are you okay, Deb?” Lauren says.

  “It’s because it was funny,” I say.

  “Honey!” Deb says.

  “She won’t tell you, but she’s a little obsessed with the Holocaust. That story—no offense, Mark—it’s not what she had in mind.”

  I should leave it be, I know. But it’s not like someone from Deb’s high school is around every day offering insights.

  “It’s like she’s a survivor’s kid, my wife. It’s crazy, that education they give them. Her grandparents were all born in the Bronx, and here we are twenty minutes from downtown Miami but it’s like it’s 1937 and we live on the edge of Berlin.”

  “That’s not it!” Deb says, openly defensive, her voice super high up in the register. “I’m not upset about that. It’s the alcohol. All this alcohol. It’s that and seeing Lauren. Seeing Shoshana, after all this time.”

  “Oh, she was always like this in high school,” Shoshana says. “Sneak one drink, and she started to cry. You want to know what used to get her going, what would make her truly happy?” Shoshana says. “It was getting high. That’s what always did it. Smoking up. It would make her laugh for hours and hours.”

  And, I tell you, I didn’t see it coming. I’m as blindsided as Deb was by that numbers story.

  “Oh, my God,” Deb says, and she’s pointing at me. “Look at my big bad secular husband. He really can’t handle it. He can’t handle his wife’s having any history of naughtiness at all—Mr. Liberal Open-Minded.” 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. 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.”

  “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 laughing so hard they can’t breathe. They’re grabbing at each other so that I can’t tell if they’re holding each other up or pulling each other down.

  “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. That thing grows right up to his eyeballs. Like having eyebrows on top and bottom both. So when Deb asks the question, the two of them, Shosh and Yuri, are 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 still get high,” Shoshana says. “I mean, all the time.”

  “Hasidim!” Deb screams. “You’re not allowed!”

  “Everyone does in Israel. It’s like the sixties there,” Mark says. “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,” I say.

  “Do you want to get high now?” Deb says. And we all three look at her. Me, with surprise. And those two 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. 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 bound up together, and I’ve somehow been wronged. Also, I’m not one to recover quickly from any kind of slight from Deb—not when there are people around. I really need to talk stuff out. Some time alone, even five minutes, would fix it. But it’s super apparent that Deb 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 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.”

  “Do you remember that nice boy that we used to smoke in front of?” Deb says. “He’d just watch us. 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 of us. Passover Rand.”

  Shoshana takes the joint and lights it with a match, sucking deep. “It’s a miracle when I remember anything these days,” she says. “After my first was born, I forgot half of everything I knew. And then half again with each one after. 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 h
olds the joint and looks at me, like I’m supposed to nod or give her permission in some husbandly anxiety-absolving way. But instead of saying, “Go ahead,” I pretty much bark at Deb. “When were you going to tell me about our son?”

  At that, Deb takes a long hit, holding 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. 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 between us. To let him know he could have my trust 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—even if I pretend not to know—any secret with him.”

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

  “That’s how it’s always been,” I say to Deb. 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 time. I’m trying to read her face, and something complex is going on, some formulation. And then she 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.

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

  “This isn’t your father’s marijuana,” Mark says. “The THC levels. 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. 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 the pot in the laundry hamper,” Deb says. “Leave it to a teenage boy to think that’s the best place to hide something. His clean clothes show up folded in his room, and it never occurs to him that someone empties that hamper. To him, it’s the loneliest, most forgotten space in the world. Point is I found an Altoids tin at the bottom, stuffed full.” 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 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.

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

  “‘Cold contact’?” I say.

  “It’s a thing,” Shoshana says. “Just forget about it and get up off the floor. Chop-chop.” And they each offer us a hand and get us standing. “Come, sit back at the table,” Shoshana says.

  “I’ll tell you,” Mark says. “That’s got to be the number-one most annoying thing about being Hasidic in the outside world. Worse than the rude stuff that gets said is the constant policing by civilians. 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, on the way in 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.

  “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, handing 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. 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.”

  “So when Jeb’s at our house,” Mark says, “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?’ 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.’”

  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 Hasidim, or before?”

  “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 is what keeps an American Jew up at night?” Mark says.

  “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.”

  “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’m 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, ‘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.”

  “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,” Mark says. “It’s 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 closed-minded. There is such a thing as Jewish culture. One can live a culturally rich life.”

  “Not if i
t’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. 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. “In Jerusalem we don’t need 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.”

  “Are you saying your marriage is better than ours?” Deb says. “Really? Just because of the rules you live by?”

  “I’m saying your husband would not have the long face, worried his wife is keeping secrets. And your son, he would not get into the business of smoking without first coming to you. Because the relationships, they are defined. They are clear.”

  “Because they are welded together,” I say, “and not glued.”

  “Yes,” he says. “And I bet Shoshana agrees.” But Shoshana is distracted. She is working carefully with an apple and a knife. She is making a little apple pipe, all the tampons gone.

  “Did your daughters?” Deb says. “If they tell you everything, did they come to you first, before they smoked?”

  “Our daughters do not have the taint of the world we grew up in. They have no interest in such things.”

  “So you think,” I say.

  “So I know,” he says. “Our concerns are different, our worries.”

  “Let’s hear ’em,” Deb says.

  “Let’s not,” Shoshana says. “Honestly, we’re drunk, we’re high, we are having a lovely reunion.”

  “Every time you tell him not to talk,” I say, “it makes me want to hear what he’s got to say even more.”

  “Our concern,” Mark says, “is not the past Holocaust. It is the current one. The one that takes more than fifty percent of the Jews of this generation. Our concern is intermarriage. It’s the Holocaust that’s happening now. You don’t need to be worrying about some Mormons doing hocus-pocus on the murdered six million. You need to worry that your son marries a Jew.”