The Instructions (82 page)

We lied about the same thing, but the lies we told were different.

759

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

I saved and closed the document and was about to attempt scripture when a plate of cut-up apple appeared beside my keyboard.

“I hear you have had no dinner,” my mother said.

I blanked my screen.

He called you? I said.

“I am told you have learned to make Jews of Junes.”

My notifier chimed.

I’ve got email, I said.

“I am told you have learned to make Jews of Junes,” my mother said again.

That’s not nearly as funny as you think, I said.

“You are laughing,” she said.

Because you think alliteration is funny, I said. I said, I’m laughing
at
you.

She kissed my cheek. “One day,” she said, “you will look back and be amazed at how much of a little shit you were to your mother who loves you, and you will come to me, and you will say, ‘Ema, I was such a little shit to you. I was such a little shit!

I said cruel things to you so casually. So often I spoke to you like you were a stupid immigrant, or someone with mental illness. I spoke to you like people speak to stinking, drunken beggars who approach them in the rain. I had so much contempt.’ And I will say to you, ‘Gurion, you remember through the eyes of a boy. I saw your small cruelties for what they were. You were only trying to be charming. You read
Portnoy’s Complaint
and believed it was charming to have contempt for your mother, to be cruel to her, 760

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

and you acted as charming as you were able.’ Have some apple I cut for you.”

I’m sorry, I said.

“I do not want you to apologize. I want you to be kind to me.

I want you to speak kindly to me.”

I handed her a piece of apple. She had a bite, then set it on the plate and took my thumbs in her hands. “What happened to the makeup?”

I showed June, I said. I said, She has the same freckles on her wrists.

She kissed my thumbs and let go of them. “The same ones?”

They’re pink, I said, but they’re the same size, and they’re definitely yuds.

“I wish you would have covered them after you showed her.

You will cover them again tomorrow, yes?”

Yes, I said. Are you upset with me?

“Why should I be upset? Eat that apple.”

I had a bite of apple. I said, It doesn’t make you angry that I showed June the freckles?

“Were you trying to make me angry?” my mom said.

I said, I was trying to show June how we were the same.

“If I had strange birthmarks, and I met someone who had the same kind, and I liked that person, I would also show that person. I would think it meant something.”

So you think it means something? I said.

“If it does not mean something,” said my mother, “then you 761

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

risked nothing by showing her, and my worries about others seeing the marks are senseless. In either case, there is no room for me to be angry. I am not a policewoman. I would not have you obey me only for the sake of obeying me. I just want you to be careful. It is careless that you did not cover them again before going to your teacher’s house, but it does not seem that he saw, and if he did see, he did not think enough of the marks to even mention them to me in passing. So no harm has been done. Just cover them tomorrow before you leave the house. Do not become careless.”

And the conversion doesn’t make you angry? I said. I said, Rabbi Salt was upset—he said it didn’t count.

“That is not so important to me, what Rabbi Salt thinks,” said my mom. “What is important to me is that you believe it counts.

It is important to me that it is important to you to have children who are like us. Whether or not June is actually like us—we can worry about that later, if you decide to marry her. And if it turns out that she is not like us, that is fine, too, as long as she becomes like us—as long as I know you’ll make sure of that.”

Really? I said.

“What is this new habit you have that when I tell you something you want to hear, you doubt my sincerity? I do not lie to you. Eat the apple I brought you. Make sure the girl you marry is Jewish when the time comes to marry her. Cover the marks tomorrow.”

Do you believe the conversion counts, though? I said.

762

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

She said, “I have no opinion. I am not a Torah scholar. If you are asking me if I believe it
should
count, the answer is yes. I believe the world should be as you wish. You are my son, and who is better than you? No one. What do you have against the apple?” She took another bite of the apple. “I suppose it is a little soft. Check your email, then come downstairs. We will see what we have here for dinner. Your father has been delayed.”

The email was from Jelly.

Sent: November 15, 2006, 7:09 PM Central-Standard Time Subject: THE PLOT THICKENS

From: [email protected] (Jelly Rothstein) To: [email protected] (me)

Dear Gurion,

How was ISS? The Cage was crazy today. Every carrel’s got a WE DAMAGE WE bomb now, and someone put one on Botha’s blotter when he went to the bathroom during a passing period. You ever think about Botha going to the bathroom? I never did til I just wrote it. It is a very sad thought, actually, but not because of why I’d think it was sad if someone told me it was sad which is because of how he probably has a hard time with his fly, which I think is actually funny since he’s such a bancer and I hope everything in his life is hard. The sad part is how after the fly’s open, and he’s using his hand to aim because it would be too cold to use his claw, what 763

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

does he do with the claw? In the movies, the unholding hand either hangs straight at the guy’s side or they put it on their hip or on the wall the urinal’s attached to, except I picture Botha like I’m standing a few feet behind him and holding a length of pianowire, and he’s peeing into the urinal, aiming with his real hand, and there’s his claw, and he can’t decide where to put it, so he lets it dangle, then puts it on his hip, then lets it dangle, then puts it on the wall, but then no, the hip, the wall, dangle, and so on until he’s done peeing and it gets me sad and I can’t get myself to garrote him after all.

Isn’t that stupid?

Anyway, the reason I’m writing is because I know how you’ve been following my sister’s stories on the Main Hall Shovers, and there’s new news she just told me I thought you should know. When they came to school today, they all got their new scarves, and during lunch, three of them drew thick Jewish stars on their blankspots with Darkers because Berman, who Ruth told me you saw her fight with in the Office, told them they should draw the stars because the blankspots meant Christian even though they weren’t Jesusfishes.

So then after school, the Shovers all had an emergency meeting by the dumpsters and Ruth was there to do a report, and the Shovers voted to kick out Berman and the other two whose blankspots were starred because Acer said they defaced official Shover apparel, and then he told them to give back their scarves, and Berman said no way they were giving their scarves that they paid for to Acer to burn in an oven like his mom’s grandma’s cousins who were burned in ovens and had to wear stars, and Ruth said Acer never said anything about an oven, but that after Berman said oven all the rest of the Shovers who were Israelites took out Darkers and starred 764

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

their blankspots, and they all walked away with their scarves still on. It really pissed off the other fifty-however-many Shovers, who voted to kick out ALL those kids who starred their blankspots, who there were thirteen of, and who before they walked away said that they were Main Hall Shovers no matter what anyone else had to say about it.

Ruth says the whole thing is very stupid. She says the Israelite Shovers are the stupidest part of it, and that Berman is the stupidest part of them because of the ovens. I think she’s right about the ovens being very uncool because that’s not even what Acer said, and even if he said it that’s probably not what he would have meant, and I think Ruth’s right that it’s stupid to put Jewish stars on the scarves, but then I also think it’s stupid to kick people out for starring their scarves because the scarves are theirs, but Ruth doesn’t agree that that part’s stupid because of how they all went through all that trouble with the Jesusfish and the blankspot, and the Israelites got their way and agreed to it. But I told Ruth they didn’t really get their way because it was Frungeon who finally decided no Jesusfish, not the Shovers, and that meant the Shovers didn’t care about their friends as much as their friends wanted them to, and that was the important thing, not the Jesusfish, and that would really piss me off if I was one of those friends, so whatever the blankspot meant, I wouldn’t have been happy about it. I would have quit because you can’t let people push you around like that and if they do you have to ditch them, I think. But then I imagine what if Mangey did something like that, or you, or, like, Benji, and how hard it would be to decide we weren’t friends anymore because a lot of the way that I think of myself is that I’m Benji’s friend, and if I stop being 765

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

Benji’s friend, then I am not who I was, and who wants to stop being who they are? I don’t. And then I also think that maybe I just don’t understand something those Shovers who starred their scarves do understand because of how I’m less Israelite than any of them, and so is Ruth, and so maybe she doesn’t understand either because we never went to Hebrew School, but I know that you’re the most Israelite person who I ever met, so what do you think?

I really want to know what I should think so that I don’t have to think about it anymore. All of it makes me uncomfortable and I don’t think that’s really fair. Who cares about the stupid Shovers, right? They’re stupid. But still. I feel bothered.

XOXO

Angelica Rothstein

PS Benji told me you were really in love with June Watermark and I wanted to tell you that what I said about her painting violent things and being weird I didn’t mean. She does paint violent things and was always weird since a couple years ago, but that’s not bad, and I was teasing you. I like her a lot, actually, and of course she didn’t really kiss Josh Berman, that was just me teasing too hard because I like to wind you up because it’s exciting for some reason, and if one day you don’t have to go to Chicago right after school and you want to hang out, like you and June and me and maybe Benji or Jenny or Leevon, but probably not Jenny since her mom’s always grounding her, and probably not Leevon because Leevon rides his bike to school and probably wouldn’t want to leave it and it would be weird if he had it while the rest of us walked, we should go to eat pizza or something else and a movie or maybe just not get on 766

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

the buses and walk to the lake instead if someone has cigarettes, the four of us, or maybe but probably not the five or six of us, since come to think of it, it should probably just be me and June and you and Benji because we probably shouldn’t invite Leevon or Jenny since they probably couldn’t go anyway for the reasons I just explained and so the invitation would only make them wish they could, and that would be suck.

PPS Ruth is standing here, looking over my shoulder, and she just told me that it is dumb to use a PS because the PS was invented before computers which means before you could cut and paste and delete stuff and that people used it because they had to write or type their letters, and once they got them perfect, they didn’t want to have to retype or rewrite them to make room for anything they realized they should have said before they signed their name, so they put what they realized they should have said in the PS, but now there’s no need to do that, so it’s dumb to do it, Ruth says, and I should just cut and paste the PS content (Ruth keeps calling it “the PS content”) into the space above the XOXO Ruth says, which is why I won’t do it, and also why I will type PPS after I finish saying what I’m saying here, which is what I am calling the PPS content, and then cut and paste it into the space right before the first “Ruth” of this paragraph (even though you can already see the “PPS” before the paragraph’s first “Ruth” right now, while I’m writing this, I mean, since there’s only just one skipped line that divides the Ruth from the “suck” that ends the PS) because if you could see how much it is bothering her right now, the way she is biting off the nails of one hand and holding that hand’s elbow with 767

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

the other hand and getting sweaty because I know how to use and will use cut and paste but still won’t use cut and paste the way she wants me to and how she can’t do anything about what I want to do because I can beat her up so easy even though she’s older than me, you would laugh at Ruth as much as I am laughing at Ruth and you would want to make that last as long as you possibly could.

I wrote her back:

Sent: November 15, 2006, 7:27 PM Central-Standard Time Subject: RE: THE PLOT THICKENS

From: [email protected] (me)

To: [email protected] (Jelly Rothstein) Hey Jelly,

You should write to me more often. I love long emails that aren’t in leetspeak, and this one especially because it helped me figure something out. While I was in ISS, I saw this Shover through the window for a second, and I instantly knew he was an Israelite, but I didn’t know how I knew he was an Israelite, and now I’m pretty sure I knew because he was one of those first three to star their scarves = I must have seen the star for a split second and registered what it meant without really registering that it was there More importantly: There are no degrees of Israelite. You either are one or you’re not. That is how it has always been. You, Jelly Rothstein, ARE one, so nobody in the world is more Israelite than you, and no one ever, in all of history, has been more Israelite than you.