The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green (11 page)

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“Time’s up,” he hears. “Pencils down.” When asked to stand in front of his third-grade classmates and name the months of the year, Jacob begins with “Thursday” and wraps up with “autumn.” When his fourth-grade teacher lifts multiplication flash cards to the class, he decides he’ll just say “six” over and
over and hope for the best. He ends up being correct twice out of thirty-five times. It becomes clear that the teachers Jacob is assigned are crucial to his ability to learn. Those with very little patience for students who daydream, tap their hands and feet, or attempt to find McDonald’s characters in the clouds will not only fail to get through to him, but will also humiliate him in front of his peers. He will then return to a home where his father has zero patience for a son with limitations. The man is tortured and embarrassed by this boy who stands before him, and his blatant inability to flourish as a student, a son. His father will literally hover over Jacob and wait for him to fail—dishes washed poorly, homework done sloppily, impromptu math quizzes cornering him at the dinner table—all to demonstrate how grotesque failure really looks, feels, is. So, in honor of Jacob, I was wondering if you’d mind if I just said, thank you for coming to see me get Bar Mitzvahed. Thank you for whichever gift it was you purchased and wrapped and handed to me. And most importantly, thank you for believing me when I tell you, Jacob is
not
me. Thank God. Your both to generis!

Love,

J (I rarely even go by Jacob.)

When my father comes in my room he’s eating a peach. “You should’ve seen Gabe tonight at rehearsal,” he says.

“Why?” I ask, with an intentionally bright smile, eyebrows high.

He takes a bite that leaves the pit exposed and sits with a bounce on the end of my bed. “
Every
one who meets him falls in love in seconds. He’s just got this way about him. He’s very, very good with adults. Very mature and . . . social and giving. Bright.”

I nod and glance down at the stack of thank-you notes on my desk. “Maybe they’ll give him a part in the play,” I say, and slide them an inch to the right.

“A part?” he says, annoyed. “He’s in
kinder
garten.” He takes
a final bite and throws it at the trash can by the door. It hits the rim and then the wall. “Damn free throws,” he says, standing and rubbing his palms together.

I let out a friendly laugh and think of something to say that might unite us. “Well”—still thinking—“the Lakers would be crazy to—”

“Let’s see the work,” he says. He wipes the juice from his mustache, his mouth stretched wide. “How many you finish?”

“I did . . . nine or ten but I’m not done.”

“Which is it?”

“Which is what?”

“Which
number?
Nine or ten?”

“I think I did nine.”

“Nine,” he says through a sigh, and takes the cards over to my bed. He lies down and kicks his tennis shoes off. “What were you doing all night long?”

I think of Megan’s breasts. “I had a lot of other homework.”

He looks up at me with a “who do you think you’re fooling” gaze from over his glasses. He shuffles the cards a few times and finds a comfy groove in the pillow with the back of his head.

“Some of them are—”

He puts his hand out like a stop sign.

“Not finished.”

He reads silently. I look down at his sneakers on the floor and wish I knew which card he had. I’m somehow comforted that he’s not wearing dark dress shoes, as if the Nikes he wears to rehearsal bring us closer to equals. I face my desk and begin to quietly jab the cover of my dictionary with a pen tip. My stomach burns.

“This one’s perfect,” he says, holding it up.

I swivel toward him in my chair. “Which one?” I say, grinning. I stand.

“Edith Gruber. You spelled everything right. You mention the Israel Bonds. You said you look forward to seeing her at Shana’s bat mitzvah. All good.”

“I really like Edith,” I say, and reach blindly for the chair below me. I sit back down. My father brings the next card to the top of the pile. Before he reads it he reaches into his pocket for his keys. He places the tip of one into his ear and twists with his eyes closed. A time-out. I stare at the cards in his hands. I know of three that don’t thank people for specific gifts and maybe five that don’t mention when I’ll see them again. I go back to poking the dictionary but I push too hard; the whole pen rips through the cover. I hear Megan tell Gabe it’s time for bed outside my room. I’m comforted by the sound as I glance at the door.

“What is
this?
” my father says. “No.
No.
”

I turn to him.

“What is this?”

The card is blocking his face. Gabriel laughs and I hear his footsteps running down the hall. “I mean it, mister,” Megan says.

“Which one, Dad?”

“
Piss!
” he screams, and flings the card into the air. It floats for a second and then tail dives into my turntable on the dresser.

“What’s wrong with it?”

He doesn’t answer. “
No,
Jacob!” he says with the next card already in front of his face. “Look at this. You don’t mention the gift, you don’t have a third line to balance it out, you don’t—”

“Which one do you have, Dad?” I stand and walk toward him with a look of stunned confusion.

He lowers the card from his face. “Get the hell away from me.”

“Why?”

“Step back.
Just
. . . step . . . back.”

“I just want to see—”

“You want to see
what,
Jacob? Your work? Your mind at work? Spell the word
generous.
Spell it. Now.”

“Why are you getting so angry?” I say.

“
Spell
the word!”

“G.”

“Fantastic, keep going.”

“G-e-n-e-r, um . . .”

“Um, um, um,” he mimics. “Dictionary! What’s it for? To
stand
on? Find ‘generous.’
Pick
it up!” he screams.

I lift the book and begin to thumb for the
G
s. My stupid hands quiver on the pages.

“Now!”

“I’m looking.”

“Is it in there? Maybe it’s a dud, it’s not in there.”

Generate. Generation. Generator. Generic.

“I found it.”

“Marvelous. Does it say, g-e-n-e-r-
i
-s?”

“No.”

“So . . . when the Mendelsons read your card and see that my son spells like a
retard,
what should I tell them? Isn’t my boy
super?
”

“I’ll rewrite it.”

“And this one. No mention of the gift, no third line to balance it out.”

“Which one, Dad?”

“Which one,
Daddy?
” he barks. “Like it fuckin’
matters.
”

“Why are you yelling?”

“What did you say?”

I don’t answer. I place the dictionary back on my desk.

“No. What did you just say? Are you a goddamn baby?”

“No.”

“How old then? Just tell me if you’re an infant so I can understand. I want to. I
want
to understand.” He lifts another card. “Garbage!” he says holding the stack high, his lips tightened and white. “You want to please me, is that what you want?
Is
it?”

I slowly nod.

“Answer me, you—!” My father is now sitting up on the bed, waiting for a reply, his teeth clenched. “Answer me!”

“Yes.”

“Yes,
what?
”

“Yes. I want to please you.”

He smiles wickedly and shakes his head. “It’s . . . sad to me, Jacob. Pathetic. You became a man last week, do you even
know
that? Can you comprehend this? This is em
barrassing,
this slop. Don’t you feel it? Look at these. I see nothing witty or snappy like we’ve talked about again and again. And you wrote, ‘
Your
one of my best friends,” spelled y-o-u-r. Are you . . .
trying
to do these crappy? Maybe that’s it. Maybe you want to prove that you’re an idiot. Are you an idiot?
Are
you?”

I squeeze my eyes closed and feel tears rising.

He bunches the next card into a ball and throws it toward me. It hits my
Incredible Hulk
pencil sharpener and falls onto the carpet. When I glance at him, his face is pinched and furious, struggling. He sits up with a jolt from the bed and runs his fingers through his scalp. He clenches a fist of his black hair and yanks once, hard. “
No!
” he screams, his pain stoking the fire.

I swallow as my face and neck fill with this familiar tingling—the predator is loose. I sit still, locked in my chair, knowing that what’s begun cannot be tied off. It is fear that now owns me, fills me like an injected drug. And the effects are quick and potent and steeped in shame. I hear Megan’s voice outside in Gabriel’s room, and I face the door. My father pops to his feet with the cards in his hand and walks toward me.

“I’ll do them again, Dad,” I say, with my eyes lowered. When I look up at him he winds up with a small skip and throws his hand toward the wall as if hurling a brick. He does not let go of the cards. He does this again and then again, flinging his arm as hard as he can with a deadened pop in his shoulder, a guttural gasp. Trapped in his rage I watch the lunatic dance. He punches his own leg with a closed fist and his knee buckles, nearly toppling him to the floor.

“Stop,” I say.

He stares at me, eyes wide.

“I’ll do them again.”

“Let me ask you something,” he says blinking, his jaw jetting forward. “Do you think these are done? Ready for the mailbox!?”

I swallow. I look at the cards he still clenches in his fist and then up at his face, bending over me. “
Do you?
” he hollers from his core.

“No,” I say, with a weak and wobbled voice.

“How long did you work on these?”

“How long?” I ask, embarrassed by the shiver in my voice.

“Yes, how long?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. Okay. The people you are writing these letters to—look me in the eyes.”

I look up at him. His face is inches from mine, his skin rattling
on his cheeks. He can only hate what he sees before him. I think to put my feet flat on the floor and lean my head slightly back. I stare into the face I can barely see behind his beard and dark lenses.

“These cards, which you
can’t . . . can’t
give a shit about, are for people who purchased you gifts.
You!
How long do you think it took to
buy
,
wrap,
and
hand
you these gifts, schmuck? How long?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” he screams, jogging in a tight circle with his arms flapping. “Like a retarded
chicken.
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know
nothing!
Is that it?
Is
it?” he screams, kneeling in front of me.

“No.”

“Do you
hate
this, Jacob!? Do you hate it, do you hate it, do you hate
me?
” he roars so loudly it rings in my ears.

I try to breathe but I can’t. I look away but I’m weak and feel the tears, the flooding, rising up from my throat.

“Oh . . . crying,” he says, and rams his fist into his eye, grinding it into the socket. “Waaaaa! Waaaaa!”

I let myself go for a moment, though I know my cowardice feeds his rage. I suck for air in quick intakes of breath and gain a semblance of strength from my own mirrored empathy.

“Look at you,” he says. “My
son.
The bar mitz
vah
.”

I squeeze my eyes and clench my jaw, drawing from fury I cannot use. When I face my father he’s preparing to stab one of the cards, to pin it to my desk with the tip of a pen. He holds it like a dagger and jabs it twice with all his strength. The pen cracks in two and crumbles from his hand. He rifles through my drawer for another. I wipe my nose on my sleeve and try to suppress any sounds that could link me to theatrics. There’s a light knock on the door.

“Yes?” my father says in his normal voice.

“Everything okay?” Megan asks.

My father looks down at me. “Everything is fine,” he says, and gently closes the drawer.

“Time for bed, Dara,” Megan says, just outside the door.

My father hovers above me at my desk, his cranium shivering in bursts. I stay silent, my chin even with his belt. “I just
hate
that you make me this way. I hate it!”

“I know.”

“Ya think I’m gonna let you send . . .
slop
to the people I love? Do ya? Pull out a fresh card. Do it now.”

I reach for one and place it on the desk in front of me.

“To Lev and Rebecca Saperstein. Write it.”

I lift my pen in my hand and watch my fingers tremble. I write the word
Dear
and reach for the gift list.

“
Lev!
” You can’t spell
Lev
without looking?
Here!
” he screams, and grabs the pen from my hand. He begins to scribble the name all over my blotter and soon scrapes it into the desk itself, burying the pen tip deep into the wood. LEV. “See it! Are you looking?” he says, and presses his palm to the back of my head. I resist and he pushes harder, bending my face toward the scratched grooves.

“Sssstop!” I whine in a voice higher than my own.

“Stop.” And he does. He stops. He lets me sit up. I feel his tangled fingers in my hair as he gently tries to uncoil them. And in seconds he’s kneeling at my feet with ever softening eyes. “Jacob,” he whispers. “I’m . . . sorry. I’m . . . just . . .”

Asher shoves my door open and we both turn to face him. I can hear his music from down the hall thumping through his speakers, heavy and loud. His fingers and forearms are streaked with white paint and his wide eyes are pinned on the
two of us. My father sniffs and slowly climbs to his feet. “Don’t you knock?”

Asher moves toward us while looking around the room like a cop.

“I asked you a question,” my father says.

“I heard you,” he says. He looks down at the embedded word
LEV
and swipes his fingertips over the wood. “It’s enough for tonight.”