Between Gods: A Memoir (5 page)

Dad asked and his parents confirmed what the guide had said. They told him about their relatives who were killed in the concentration camps. Dad’s grandparents, the aunts he’d never known.

I try to imagine what this must have been like for Dad. To spend your whole life thinking you were one thing, only to find out you are something completely different. That everything you thought you knew—your church, your school, the food your family ate—was a carefully constructed fabrication, designed to mislead even the most casual observer. Implicit in this charade, unspoken and therefore all the more terrible, was the knowledge that the truth had killed your family.

seven

F
AMILY LIFE IS DEFINED BY TRADITION
. Degan and I are slapdash: We fall into bed at different times. We eat our dinner on the run. Come Friday, though, we slow things down. Years ago, we agreed to a day each weekend when we would turn off the phone, turn off the Internet and relax into each other’s company. It’s a ritual we call, our tongues firmly in our cheeks, “24 Hours Unplugged.”

There’s always a moment of panic after pulling the plug, a huge chasm yawning in front of us. But we have learned how important it is to do it anyways.

This Friday it feels especially needed. The week has been crazy, Degan adjusting to his new job, me ticking my way through the tasks of adjusting to a new city: finding the closest gym, the closest post office; figuring out where to buy dish soap. As dusk falls, we put our cells away. We turn off our
computers, the frenzied screens falling peaceful like the faces of sleeping children. We cook slowly, and eat together in the strange and fertile silence. After dinner we retreat to the couch, where we sit on opposite ends, our feet touching lightly in the middle.

I’ve been waiting all week for the chance to get to the reading that has been assigned for Doing Jewish, from Anita Diamant’s
Living a Jewish Life
. Now I pull out the book. I turn it over in my hands like a talisman, savouring its unbroken spine. I read the blurbs on the back and the dedication on the opening page. I flip to the Contents page: the first chapter I’ve been assigned is about Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest.

A Jewish day of rest?

I read, for the first time, about the day of study and prayer that is the cornerstone of all Jewish life. Every Friday evening, Jews around the world light candles, recite blessings and rejoice in a taste of the world to come. In the modern world, a crucial part of the ritual is turning off technology.

I look over at my phone, as inert as a stone; at the clean kitchen, dishes gleaming, and the actual fire Degan has kindled in the hearth.

“Hey, babe,” I say.

He glances up from his own book.

“
Listen
to this.” I read him the description, and a slow smile spreads across his face. “Yup—‘24 Hours Unplugged,’ ” he says. “The Jews have been spying on us.”

“I know.”

“For centuries.”

“Copycats.”

He laughs.

“Isn’t it bizarre?” I say. “It’s like we invented something out
of my ancestors’ tradition. I mean, how does that happen? What are the chances?”

“Do you think you’d heard about Shabbat and forgotten? That you suggested ‘24 Hours Unplugged’ based on something someone told you?”

I shake my head. “I’ve never heard of Shabbat before right now.”

“Maybe Jordan?” Degan knows the story of my outing on the playground.

“Nope. Really.”

“Weird,” he says.

He lowers his face to his reading, but I’m too excited to stop. “It’s almost like a genetic memory,” I say. “Like my
cells
were remembering something my consciousness had been told to forget.”

Degan is silent.

“Right?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Sure.”

From behind him comes the steady tick of the clock on the stove.

“I mean, the ritual we have ‘invented’ (I make quotes in the air with my fingers) constitutes, point for point, a secular version of Shabbat. We rest, we eat, we make love.” I clear my throat. “We watch videos, which is like our version of praying.”

He laughs again.

“In a way, we’re living as Jews,” I say.

“I know,” Degan says. “I get it. It’s cool.”

I can see he wants to get back to his book and I let the subject drop, but I feel an overpowering urge to tell someone who would fully understand the implications. Someone Jewish. But who? Jordan lives on the other side of the country. My father
hardly counts. What about Eli, his dinner invitation? I think back to a scene in his book where he goes away to reflect on his Hasidic upbringing. His girlfriend telephones him again and again. Again and again he ignores her calls.

He sounds like an asshole, I think. But he is also undeniably compelling.

Eli and I agree to meet up at a restaurant called Utopia on College Street. It’s a Tuesday evening in the full blush of autumn, the maple trees showing off their prettiest dresses. I lock my bike and see him right away on the busy sidewalk, a head taller than anyone else, moving toward the intersection. His bright orange sweater matches the fall leaves. He hasn’t spotted me, and I walk for a minute beside him in the crowd, bump my shoulder lightly against his. He pulls away instinctively, and then sees it’s me who has nudged him. “Oh!” He laughs, “You scared me!”

We go inside, joking, already comfortable.

The restaurant is almost as noisy as the street, and packed with young hipsters sporting plaid shirts and tattoos. I go downstairs to the bathroom; on my way back to the table, I see Eli surreptitiously mussing his hair.

I order a lamb burger, sweet potato fries and a beer.

“I’ll have the same,” Eli tells the waitress. “But no beer.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“Allergic.”

I realize I know nothing whatsoever about this person.

Soon, though, we find we have many things in common. We skip the small talk and launch into a heated conversation about the writing life, about the loneliness at the heart of the true creative enterprise. We talk about the relentless desire to write something good, something
perfect
, and the inevitable accompanying
disappointment. There are so many books in the world. Why add another unless it’s special?

I gesture at the spine of a novel poking out of his bag. “For example,” I say, “that one.”

“You didn’t like it?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

I squint. “Well, for one thing, the women weren’t complex enough.”

He eyes me thoughtfully. “Are you married?” he asks finally.

He’s the kind of man, I see, who isn’t afraid to take what he wants. Our emails have flirted around this subject, but now that he’s got me in person he can address it head-on.

“No, not married.” I stop with a french fry halfway to my mouth. I haven’t told Degan where I am tonight, who I’m meeting. I wait to hear myself say, “Engaged,” but no sound comes out of my mouth. I find myself twisting my ring around my finger so the diamond doesn’t show.

Eli wears a ring, too. I don’t inquire.

“So,” I say, instead. “I really did like your book. I wasn’t just being nice.”

“Thanks,” he says. “Are you Jewish?”

“Why?”

He shrugs. “Jews react to it differently.”

“Half,” I say. “But I grew up thinking I was Christian.” I explain, and tell him about my recent discovery, that I’ve been making Shabbat for several years without knowing it.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean a day of rest. Turning off the phones and computers. Everything.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s amazing.”

“Isn’t it?”

His eyes are wide. I continue, emboldened. “Until a month ago I knew nothing about Judaism at all. But everything I learn feels so comfortable, so familiar.”

He nods. “You’re recognizing who you are. Realizing what you’ve always been. You just didn’t know it until now.”

“Yes.”

“It’s a big thing you’re going through,” Eli says. “It’s huge.”

It’s a simple, even obvious statement, but Eli is the first person to reflect this back to me. Something lights up in my chest: I’ve been seen. Later I will understand the power in this, the psyche’s desperate lunge toward an acknowledgement that has been withheld for so long in my family. But for now I’m just grateful.

“That’s it,” I say. “You’re right.” I take a big swallow of beer and force myself to look at his ring. “And your girlfriend? The one in the book. Are you still together?” I think of how she called him and he refused to pick up, and of how frustrated I felt on her behalf.

“I’m with someone else now,” he says.

“You dumped her?”

“Something like that.”

“And your
new
girlfriend?”

“She’s away for a couple months.”

“Is she Jewish?”

“Nope.”

“Does it matter to you?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

I flush.

“I’m just teasing,” he says, and reaches across the table to
squeeze my shoulder. He chews, considering. “No,” he says. “It doesn’t matter to me right now.” He pauses. “But at some point it will. I’d like to raise my children as Jews.”

We look at each other. I can almost see the joint thought bubble in the air over our heads, the cartoon sketch of the brood of Jewish children we could produce together.

What a relief it would be having a partner who could serve as my personal guide to my ancestors’ tradition.

After dinner we walk in the Annex arm in arm, like a couple from an earlier century, like we’ve known each other for years. We stroll along the leafy avenues, turn down an alley lined with back doors, the secret selves the houses don’t show. I have the feeling there’s something Eli wants to tell me. Several times he starts and then stops. Finally he turns to me. “I’m leaving in January,” he says.

There’s a thud in my gut. “Oh?”

Up on College Street we hear a woman yell, “José! Get back here! You little idiot!”

“For a six-month writing residency,” Eli says.

I don’t need to ask where. I know with complete certainty that he’s about to say “Paris,” and when he does, he sees the look on my face and peers at me, puzzled. “What?” he asks.

“In the Latin Quarter, right?”

“How did you know?”

“I applied.”

“You’re not?”

“They took me. But I decided not to go.”

Eli has expressive features, but a look crosses his face now that I can’t quite read. Relief, or disappointment. “That’s weird,” he says. “That we’d apply to the same place.”

I nod. “At the same time. And both be accepted.”

“Why did you turn it down?”

I think back. “I’m not sure. It didn’t feel right.”

He screws up his nose. “Weird,” he says again.

Eventually we find ourselves back on College Street, lit up like a carnival at night.

“Toronto is so busy,” I say. “I’m overwhelmed.”

“It’s a good city.”

“But it’s so big. Nobody knows their neighbours. You have to make
plans
to see anyone.”

“We made plans,” he points out.

We have reached our bikes. Identical blue milk crates strapped on as baskets. We kiss briefly on the lips, the hip citykids’ kiss.

I watch him bike away.

Just a little crush, I tell myself. No cause for concern.

But as I cycle home, I notice the leaves are falling. The days are getting darker. I am crying all the time. And Degan feels far away, like a tiny boat far out on the sea.

eight

I
SPEND THE FOLLOWING MORNING
at my desk, researching therapists. I’ve come to recognize the signs that I’m going to need one. I’ve left it later than I should have, though, and the Googling, the calling and speaking to candidates, the locating of their various practices on a map of the enormous city takes a lot of energy. Still, I am determined to find the right person. Somebody—as Dad would say—
good
. There is a woman named Eileen who lives close to our new apartment, but my psyche demands something even more subterranean, and I settle eventually on Charlotte, whose office I get to by subway, taking a long, steep escalator down, down, into the series of tunnels that run beneath the city, before emerging again, north, in the sunshine.

Charlotte is a proper British lady of indeterminate age, with a pin skewering the bun on the back of her head and stockings under her sandals. Her office is decked out in full Jungian
regalia, with a sand table and a mandala on the wall. She sits in a rocking chair; where Ben would nod or murmur, Charlotte rocks.

Me: “I feel so awful.”

Her:
Rock, rock
.

Me: “I can hardly get out of bed in the morning.”

Her:
More rocking
.

She asks me what else is going on in my life. I tell her about our recent move, about my newfound attraction to Judaism. Unlike Ben, she alights on my Holocaust history immediately, questioning me about it in detail. “Your relatives died in Auschwitz?”

I nod.

“Is there a way you remember them in your family? With a
yahrzeit
, maybe?”

“With a … pardon?”

She explains about the memorial candle lit on the anniversary of a death. I shake my head: no.

“Why do you think you’re so suddenly drawn to Judaism?”

I tell her how I identify with Dad’s side of the family. I’ve always been a Pick. I do share some of my mother’s qualities: her particular brand of remoteness, her fixation with maintaining a good appearance. I love, as she does, to go to an early movie or crawl into bed in the evening and read. But my personality traits are all from my father. I’m dramatic by nature, and don’t care much what people think of me. Prone to bursts of vigorous activity followed by long inert spells of brooding. If you put me beside my Martin cousins, nobody would think we were related; whereas my Pick cousins could be my sisters.

This Pick resemblance goes back several generations. We four granddaughters are sturdy brunettes with an uncanny
likeness to our great-grandmother Marianne, the one who was killed in Auschwitz.