The Wonder Spot (5 page)

It seemed possible that he hadn't learned any of our names, except those of his star pupils: Mitchell Cohen, a shy genius who reminded me of Robert; and Leslie Liebman, whose hand remained perpetually in the air, the Hebrew word—or, as the class progressed, sentence—pursed in her prissy lips.

When anyone else raised a hand, Moreh Pinkus said a reluctant, “Yes?” But he preferred calling on “Mr. Cohen” or “Miss Liebman,” whose answers were guaranteed to be correct.

Those of us who never raised our hands seemed invisible to him. He didn't even look up when I left the room.

I went down the hall to the lobby and browsed at the display case ambitiously called the gift shop, never open. There was nothing in that case I wanted—not the menorahs or the Jewish-themed jewelry, not the illustrated children's books about Jewish holidays or history—but I scanned the case as though it might contain a Bob Dylan album I didn't have or the cross-stitched peasant blouses I liked.

Then into the powder room. I was slouched down in one of the cushy chairs when I heard pounding coming from the bathroom.

I pushed the door open. Margie was trying to get dimes out of the Kotex machine.

“I didn't think you were here,” I said.

She said, “I'm not here.”

I was impressed that Margie was unwilling to go to class even for the one second it took to say,
Here.
It made her cutting seem more fearless and forthright than mine.

“Do you have anything to eat?” she asked.

I didn't.

When she lit a cigarette for me, I noticed that she still wore her baby bracelets. She was the only one who did. The bracelet of choice now, worn by both girls and boys, was a stainless-steel cuff engraved with the name and serial number of a soldier missing in Vietnam. It was called an MIA bracelet, and my impression was that you had to order it, but from whom? I asked Margie if she knew.

She said, “I don't know what you're talking about,” and got up and tried the door to the supply closet. It was locked, but a few minutes later, she got up and checked it again, as though with time and patience the door might open. I didn't understand her fascination with the closet, which I said was probably just where extra paper towels and toilet paper were stored.

“Really?” she said. “Then why do they lock it?”

I said that I was going back to class, and she said, “What for?”

I said, “I am learning the Hebrew language.”

On the spot, she invented an excellent nonsense language that sounded as much like Hebrew as Hebrew did.

I answered in kind, mixing in the few real Hebrew words I knew with sound-alikes. At first we were animated and theatrical, but then I got serious. I found myself telling her about seeing Eric Green with his new girlfriend. In made-up Hebrew, I found the words to describe exactly how I felt. It was a relief just to say them.

Margie responded with a jokey, hand-waving argument, and I thought,
Did you not understand the importance of what I just told you?
I reminded myself that I hadn't spoken in English. Still, I had trouble forgiving her.

I stood and said,
“Mishpoka,”
meaning,
See ya,
and she said,
“Mishpoka,”
back.

Then I was out in the hall. I couldn't bring myself to go back to class yet, so I stopped at the gift shop to browse again through all the items I wouldn't want even if they were free.

I started at the sound of Miss Bell's voice: “Aren't you supposed to be in class?”

I turned around and waited for her to recognize me, a student who made her miss teaching.

She just blinked.

All I could do was nod,
I'm going,
and go.

I walked up the long hallway back to class. Right before I opened the door, I turned around and saw that Miss Bell was still standing there in the lobby, watching me, her arms folded below her chest.

. . . . .

When I got home from Hebrew school, Jack was sitting on the kitchen floor reading his favorite novel,
The Stranger
, Albert at his side.

I got down on the floor, too. I said, “I hate Hebrew school.”

Jack said, “Everybody does.”

I realized that he was home early. “Don't you have practice?”

He acted like he hadn't heard my question, but I'd learned from my father that if you waited long enough, Jack would answer.

Finally, he said, “We had an away game.”

I said, “Why aren't you away?”

When he answered, his voice was so quiet I didn't think he wanted me to hear him: “I wasn't going to get to play.”

“Why not?”

He raised his voice to normal volume, but it sounded louder because of how quiet it had been. “ ‘Why?' ” he said. “Because I'm not good enough.”

I was about to say,
That's not true,
but I realized that it was true; he wouldn't have said it otherwise. I waited a minute, and then I said, “That sucks.”

He laughed, which was a relief. Then he said, “Want to watch cartoons?”

“Cartoons?”

He said, “I was just thinking how we never watch cartoons anymore.”

I thought,
Did we ever watch cartoons?

We took glasses of milk and a plate of oatmeal cookies upstairs to the guest room where the television was.

Jack turned the channel to the cartoon
Spider-Man
and said, “It's Spidey.”

I said, “We should get a big color television.”

He said, “Mom and Dad don't want one,” as if I didn't know.

We'd been watching
Spider-Man
for about three minutes when he said, “The problem is that I don't really like cartoons anymore.”

“I never liked them.” I got up and changed the channel to a
Brady Bunch
rerun. “Why is that a problem?”

His voice got serious. “I guess I'm afraid I'm running out of things I like.”

“You like new things,” I said. “Like football.”

As soon as the words were out I was sorry. I was trying to take them back when I said, “I don't get why you went out for it in the first place.”

I waited a long, long time for him to answer. Finally, I put my hand on his bicep, and without a word he flexed it for me.

I asked if he had any ideas about how I could get out of Hebrew school.

He said, “Talk to Dad.”

“What should I say?”

“Say it's interfering with regular school.”

I'd hardly done any homework since school had begun. “I don't think I can say that.”

He studied me for a second. “You should do your homework, Sophie.” He turned off the television and went to his room.

I snapped the TV back on, but I was too angry to watch.

At the stairs to his bedroom, formerly our attic, I knocked on the wall.

“Don't come up,” he called down.

I said, “I want to talk to you.”

He didn't answer.

“Don't tell me to do my homework,” I called up. “You're not my father.”

He came down the stairs in his sweatpants.

I said, “Did you hear me?”

“I'm not your father,” he said.

“Right,” I said, following him down to the kitchen.

He said, “Okay,” in the tone my father used when he said,
Point taken.

I stood by while he put on his socks and tied his sneakers.

He was almost out the door when I said the line from
The Sound of Music
I'd repeated each time he'd left to go running that summer: “You can't run away from your problems, Liesl; you've got to face them.”

He'd smiled whenever I'd said this before—he appreciated repeating jokes as much as I did, but I could see he didn't appreciate this one anymore; he opened the door and ran down the driveway.

I was helping my mom with dinner when he came back, sweaty and red-faced. He was stretching against the station wagon. I opened the door and, without thinking, made the joke I'd always made upon his return: “I knew you'd come back!”

This time he smiled, so I kept going. I pretended that he'd been gone for years, and he let me hug him. “I told you he'd come home,” I said to my mother. “This calls for a celebration!”

. . . . .

I decided I would talk to my father after dinner; I planned to tell him that I had no Hebrew aptitude and also to convey the message of Bob Dylan's song “It Ain't Me, Babe.” Though obviously written about a girlfriend, this song contained the overall message I needed to deliver to my parents: Unfortunately, we all had to face that I was not the person they wanted me to be.

The door to my father's study was open but, as usual, Jack was in
there. I decided to wait in the hall. I'd just sat down when I heard Jack say, “It's interfering with my applications.”

My dad said, “I don't see any evidence of that.”

There was a silence, and I knew he was waiting for Jack to tell the truth.

“I want to spend time with Robert and Sophie,” he said, “before I go away.”

“That's a nice thought.”

“I'm worried about Sophie,” Jack said.

“That's not your department, Buddy.”

Jack said, “She seems sort of lost.”

I thought,
Lost how? How am I lost?
Suddenly I felt lost.

My father said, “You want to quit football to take care of Sophie?” He had a gift for rewording a point so you could hear how idiotic it was. “I thought you liked football.”

“I don't know,” Jack said. “I don't know what I like.” Then he was talking about
The Stranger
and meaninglessness, which was meaningless to me; I considered going upstairs to worry about myself.

My father's voice was gentle, but I could tell he was getting impatient when he said, “Let's save existentialism for another night.” Then he asked exactly what I had—why Jack had wanted to go out for the team in the first place—and I thought,
Score one for Sophie,
and maybe I wasn't so lost after all.

Jack waited a long time to answer. “I guess I wanted to be the kind of guy who plays football.”

“What kind is that?” my dad said, which was exactly what I wanted to know.

Jack said, “Or I didn't want to be the kind who
can't
play football.”

My father said, “What's wrong with being a nerdy Jewish intellectual?” meaning himself.

It was funny just hearing my father use a word like
nerdy,
and I expected Jack to laugh, but he said, “I tried so hard,” and the pain I heard in his voice made my stomach hurt.

My father said things like, “You never played before,” and, “You
made the goddamned varsity,” and then they were talking about backup schools, Penn versus Cornell.

I lay down on the rug and studied its repeating rams. It was fraying, and one long string looked very much like it wanted to be pulled. I told myself that if I didn't pull it, my father would let me quit Hebrew school.

I woke to my father saying, “Sweetheart?” and the rough rug on my cheek.

I sat up.

He said, “Did you want to talk to me?”

I nodded, and yawned.

He yawned, too, and asked if it could wait until tomorrow, and I said it could.

But tomorrow was Thursday, his night to play indoor tennis, and Friday he decided to go to services. Robert went with him, acting like it was a big treat. From my window, I watched the two of them walk down our street, my father's hand on Robert's shoulder.

. . . . .

In math, I could feel how cold and dreary the afternoon was, the drizzle and the gray sky, though I couldn't see it; since our week of Indian summer, Mr. Faye had kept the shades down.

It was the sound of a ball booming against the side of the building that made him go over to the window and lift the shade.

We all turned to look: Margie was out in the courtyard by herself. She was holding a brown-red ball and was about to drop it for another kick when Mr. Faye got the window open.

Before he could speak, she called out, “Sorry.”

After Mr. Faye closed the window and pulled the shade down, I remembered Margie playing kickball at Surrey. When she was up, everyone in the outfield would automatically move way out. I'd seen her kick it over the fence for a home run. I remembered her running the bases. Afterward, she'd looked miserable—flushed, sweaty, squinting, winded—but now it occurred to me that she'd been happy.

Hardly anyone played kickball at Flynn, and no girls. I felt sorry
for her then, but I doubt she felt sorry for herself. Mr. Faye had just returned to the board when another kick boomed against the wall.