Sons of the 613 (3 page)

I'm at the bridge, then over it, stumbling along the narrow, weed-choked path, the marsh grass nearly as tall as I am.

“Okay, Isaac, I'm coming now,” I hear him call. I try to accelerate.

Things Josh did in high school besides fighting: drove fast, played music too loud, drank beer and barely tried to hide it, nearly got expelled four times, had screaming arguments with my parents, wore out the patience of a long line of therapists, put his fist through several walls and one thick door, and threw the television through a window.

He's much calmer now that he's twenty, but you can see why I'm running.

I take a branching path, one that roughly parallels the twisting course of the creek. A few hundred yards downstream is a dense copse of trees and vines, the sort of place where I might be able to hide and figure out my strategy. Maybe I can sleep there. Or wait until sundown and then get my bike and ride to Danny Wong's house. They'd have to take me in. Or I could go to the Fitzgeralds' house and use their phone, call my mom, and explain everything. I decide that would be worse than letting Josh catch me.

I stop to listen, panting, and don't hear anything. This is ridiculous. He's not actually going to hurt me. Then I remember the time at Lake Calhoun when the guy bumped into Josh and cursed at him. Afterward, when the guy's friends were dragging the guy off, Josh said to Lisa, “Sorry you had to see that. Sometimes I just get so
angry
. . .”

I start running again.

I guess girls are attracted to Josh's sort of behavior, because he's had a ton of girlfriends, most of whom my parents didn't like (typical question from my mom to my dad: “So, who's this latest little whore?”). I think, but I'm not positive, that they caught him having sex in his room late one night.

Josh will be returning to school this fall. This makes my parents very happy. New plan: to become a lawyer (“So I can sue doctors,” he tells my dad).

Last year I finally got up the guts to ask my mom if—considering how different Josh was from the rest of us—well, if he was maybe adopted.

“No,” said my mom, “I screwed the doorman at our building in New York.”

Here's a suggestion I have for any mothers out there who have a sense of humor like my mother's: Save it. It's gross and shocking, and your son will be appalled. I certainly was. My mom quickly realized that I was disturbed by what she said, but if anything she seemed exasperated with me—like me being grossed out was
my
fault.

“Oh, c'mon,” she said impatiently, “Look, somewhere along the line one of our ancestors probably got raped by some Cossack.” Which wasn't much better, but whatever. “So just the right sperm hits the right egg”—still very gross; why always so gross?—“and we end up with Josh.”

And me?

You know the old Looney Tunes cartoon where the guy finds the frog, and the frog starts dancing and singing show tunes? Except every time the guy tries to get the frog to perform for someone else, the frog just sits there? That frog is my brain. For a certain select group of people the frog will come out and perform. For the rest of the world, and especially when I need him the most, the frog is AWOL.
Rrrrrribbit.
Don't worry, says my mother, you'll bloom. Soon everyone will know how funny and smart you are. But if you've seen that cartoon, you know that the guy ends up putting the frog back into the box and burying it again.

My legs are getting weaker. I trip over a hidden knot of intertwined roots and stumble forward, catching myself with my hands. I pause again, gulping air, listening. Nothing. More running.

Josh loves our little sister, Lisa. He adores her. He's constantly giving her piggyback rides and paying attention to her and buying her little presents, even when it isn't her birthday.

He doesn't love me. He doesn't even like me. When I first learned the meaning of the word
contempt,
I realized that it's what he feels for me. I actually wrote that on a weekly vocabulary quiz for Mrs. Jensen's fifth grade class. “Contempt: what my brother Josh feels for me.”

Josh has since made an appearance in several other vocab quizzes as an example for the following words:
Mercurial. Volatile. Ruminative.
And
conundrum.
As in, “My brother is an inscrutable conundrum.”

Because that's what he is to me: a mystery. I don't know what he thinks, what he does, who his friends are, where he goes at night when he comes home at sunrise, why he left college, what he's doing home now without a job. He's a mystery, a closed door. And I think most of the time I'm like a ghost to him, someone who barely registers in his consciousness.

The path has taken me back close to the creek, which is about fifteen feet off to my right. The tangle of trees is up ahead of me. I'm maybe twenty seconds away from safety. I look over my shoulder. No sign of Josh. I'm fine.

Then I look to my right, at the creek, and at the lawns that slope down toward it. Josh is there on the other side, jogging effortlessly along on a parallel course with me, relaxed and unconcerned. He waves cheerfully. I stop running. What's the use. Then, with no warning, he alters his course and accelerates and rockets directly at me, as if the eight-foot-wide creek isn't there between us. And it might as well not be, because he's suddenly airborne, and I watch with my jaw hanging open as his leap takes him in an impossibly high trajectory over the water to land practically next to me.

I stare at him, dumbfounded, my chest heaving.

“Don't . . .” I say, pausing to get more oxygen to my brain, “hit me.”

But he doesn't hit me. Instead he places a hand on my shoulder. I flinch anyway.

“Isaac,” he says, “we have to talk.”

“What's the first thing you say up there onstage during your bar mitzvah?” asks Josh.

Above my head, the grass is rising and falling with each step Josh takes.

“Josh, would you please put me down?”

“Nope. What's the first thing you say up there, other than all the Hebrew stuff
?”

“I don't know.”

The grass is over my head because Josh has me slung over his shoulder and is carrying me back to the house. To be honest, it's actually not that uncomfortable, now that I've stopped struggling.

“What you say,” says Josh, “is ‘Today, I am a man.'”

“Oh. Right. Which is pretty stupid.”

“Yeah, I'd say so. Are you a man?”

“Um . . . no?”

“No, you're not. You're still a boy.”

“Thanks.”

“It's a simple statement of fact.”

“Yes, I'm aware of that.”

An orange lawn sprinkler drifts by overhead, followed by an abandoned chewie toy. We must be crossing the Elofsons' yard. Josh could carry me like this for an hour in any direction and the scenery would look about the same: huge suburban lawns, wooded areas, broad, quiet streets, parks, golf courses, more lawns. The Golden Ghetto, one of the wealthiest communities in the country. My parents make fun of it and tell me how sheltered and coddled I am and how much better New York is. But I was born here, and I'll be honest—I like it.

“You know,” says Josh, “when our ancestors got bar mitzvahed, it really meant that they were men, that they were ready.”

“Yeah, and they died when they were, like, seventeen.”

“That doesn't matter. The community saw them as men. They saw themselves as men. I don't think you can honestly say that about yourself.”

“Again, thanks.”

I spot a new-looking golf ball partially hidden in the lush grass. Dave Erickson must have been practicing his chip shots again, making his way from yard to yard along the creek. No one minds around here.

“And I'm not talking about your voice being low or having hair on your balls.”

“Josh . . .”

“I'm talking about being a man, the things that make you a man.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

I'm not exactly sure what those things are to Josh, but I'm a bit worried I might be finding out.

An upside-down rosebush passes on my right. We're now in our backyard. The swing set comes into view, and then the garden, and then we're walking up the twelve wooden steps to the back porch. From my vantage point I realize that they could use a coat of paint.

When we get to the porch, Josh flips me off his shoulder and deposits me neatly into one of the patio chairs.

“Don't move.” He heads to the sliding door and pauses. “You want a lemonade?”

He reemerges a minute later with two tall lemonades, the condensation beading on the glasses. He hands me one, pulls a chair around to face me, and sits.

“Cheers.” He knocks his glass against mine.

“I want to make something clear,” he says after a sip. “I'm not blaming you.”

“For not having hairy balls?”

“You know what I mean. It's really Dad's fault. He's not a bad guy, but I mean, what is he going to teach you? How to identify a Bach recording?”

I wince at the reference. Two years ago I had come home in tears, having learned an important life lesson: When the music teacher plays some classical music and challenges his students to identify it, don't be the kid who eagerly shoots his hand up and says, “That's Glenn Gould playing Bach's
Goldberg Variations.
” And absolutely don't dig yourself in deeper by adding—with the total certainty of someone who's parroting his father—“It's really the best rendition.”

The teasing was vicious. It was weeks before I could walk the halls without someone sneering, “It's
really
the
best
ren
di
tion.”

“It's my fault,” continues Josh. “I've been a crappy older brother.”

I don't rush to disagree, and then realize that maybe now is a good time to start doing so.

“No, you've been a . . . good older brother. You really have. You don't have to do anything else. Really.”

“No. I should have been there for you, and I haven't because I've been so caught up in my own crap. There are things you need to know. Things I wish
I
had known. Things I wish someone could have taught me.”

How not to get expelled?
I nearly say, but my instinct for self-preservation wins out.

“I mean, look at you,” says Josh.

I look at me.

“When's the last time you did any exercise?”

“I have gym every day.”

“I'm not talking about kickball. Or jerking off.”

“I don't jerk off
!”

“Really? I didn't know you were born without a dick.”

“I play soccer.”

“Okay, so the last exercise you did was last summer.”

“So what? So I'm not a jock.”

“Not a jock? You're in the
chess
club.”

“I'm
not
in the chess club. I occasionally play chess. Some of the people I play with are in the chess club. It's a false syllogism to suggest that indicates I'm in—”

“Did you just say ‘syllogism'?'”

“What? No. Maybe.”

“This is exactly my point. You're in the chess club—”

“I'm
not
in the chess club.”

“—and you use words like ‘syllogism.'”

“What, I'm not manly if I use big words?”

“You still play D&D.”

I don't have an answer for that. He sits back and crosses his arms, triumphant: check and mate.

It's true. Danny, Steve, Paul, and I have been playing faithfully for four years, introduced to it by the assistant librarian. The librarian vanished after a few months, at which point our parents sat us down individually for awkward conversations about whether or not he'd ever done anything that made us feel
uncomfortable.
That's when Josh taught me the term
pedophile,
which he described in traumatic detail. But the four of us keep playing secretly. When we talk about it at school—if ever—we use code. We all instinctively understand where D&D players are ranked in the junior high school social hierarchy and that it's probably time to hang up our dice. Still, you don't just walk away from an honestly earned level-nineteen half-elf cleric.

“Isaac,” says Josh, “you can't keep being a nervous little kid who runs to Mom for everything.”

“I don't run to Mom for everything. Sometimes I run to Dad.”

“You know why you're such a smartass? Because you're weak, and scared of everything. You want to keep being a scared smartass?” he says. “Huh?” he adds when I don't respond.

“Hold on, I'm trying to think up a smartass answer.”

He snorts and sits back in his chair. “You're smarter than me, Isaac. You're certainly smarter than I was at your age. And you know what you're like? All those supersmart, weakass Jews who got slaughtered by the Nazis.”

There it is, finally. I'm surprised it took him so long to get to it. Josh, who my dad says always wants to refight the Second World War. Josh, who transformed himself into SuperJew—the single most effective thing he ever did to annoy my parents—and who used to go around Edina wearing a yarmulke. A black one with skulls and crossbones on it.

“The world doesn't need any more weak Jews.”

I'm not sure what an appropriate response is to that, so I say nothing. I sip at my lemonade, avoiding his gaze, watching a squirrel skitter nervously along the branches of the tree that rises above the deck, the leaves making shooshing and rustling noises as he agitates his way along. I can feel Josh watching me.

“How's your lemonade?” he asks.

“Fine, I guess.”

“Good.”

He takes another drink of his lemonade, observing me, thinking. He's silent long enough that I finally look over at him. His expression makes me even more nervous.