The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green (8 page)

“So with night school and the summer seminars they offer,
I could feasibly have a private practice somewhere in the . . . let’s see . . . mid-1990s.”

“Nineteen ninety!” I say. “Are you gonna drive a Millennium Falcon to your office, Mom?”

“A what?”

“Can I go to your office, Mommy?” says Dara.

“Not yet, baby.”

“I want to go,” says Gabe.

“We’ll all go,” my father says. “If Mommy doesn’t change her mind that is. Long road, a Ph.D. You may decide to jump off at some point.”

“I doubt it,” she says, smiling.

“It’s not as if you’re not busy with . . . or . . . ful
filled
by your family.”

“I can do both,” she says, reaching to touch my cheek. “No one here is losing me.”

“A Ph.D. is a haul,” my father says. “When are you gonna study? In the middle of the night?”

She looks up at him and then down at her food. “I’ll find a way.”

He laughs and lifts his spoon to his mouth. “If you make it, do we all get free therapy?”

She dips her spoon into her bowl. “You refuse to go, remember?” She brings the soup to her mouth.

My father leans back in his chair and blinks at her. “I was making a joke.”

“Gabe!” Dara screams. “Stop touching my carrots.”

Gabriel is leaning halfway out of his booster chair with his hands in Dara’s plate.

“Gabriel, keep your hands on your own food,” my mother says.

My father lifts a bored gaze to both of them. He then glances at Asher just in case he missed something to scowl at. Asher takes a bite at just the right time. My father looks back at my mother. “You don’t know a joke when you hear one, huh?”

“I . . . need to buy a few more books on Monday,” she says, avoiding his stare. “One of them is forty-five dollars. Should I just use the credit card, or do you want to give me some cash?”

He sits forward shaking his head and lifts his spoon. “You said someone named Judith called.”

“So you’d rather I use the credit card then.”

“Fine, sure,
do
it. Who’s this Judith person?”

My mother looks up at my father for a second and lays her spoon on her napkin. “Judith Cohen. From the temple. Steven, her son, is selling raffle tickets or something . . . for a carnival at the Hebrew school. She just wanted to know if we were interested.”

“The boys’ Hebrew school?”

My mother nods.

“Wonderful. So you have them to sell as well?” he asks me. This could be bad. Neither of us has been to Hebrew school quite yet. “I have them,” I say.

“What are you waiting for? How many do you have to sell?”

“Twenty. I think . . . twenty.”

“You think? How many’d
you
get?” he says to Asher.

“About that. Twenty. Twenty-ish.”

“Have you tried to sell any?”

“No,” Asher says. “There’s still a lot of time.”

“Have
you
tried yet?” he says to me.

“I’m . . . tomorrow I was going to—”

“You’ll call the Litvins, the Brotts, the Kafins. Everyone at my office. I’ll give you the temple registry. You’ll have ’em sold by Friday.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I say.

“What are they, a buck apiece?”

“I think, yeah.”

“Yes, not
yeah
. Yes.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll buy five,” he says to me.

“Great,” I say, smiling and nodding. Asher gives me a death glance, and I pull back on the joy.

“And I’ll buy five of yours, Asher,” my mother says.

My father looks up at her. “Let him do his own legwork, would you, please?”

“You can’t offer to buy some from J and not—”

“Asher doesn’t have a learning disability, Claire.”

In the pause that follows, I wait before looking at my mother. She shuts her eyes and lets her head fall sideways on her shoulder.

“I’ve asked you not to do that,” she says. “I’ve asked you not to say that in front of the others. To label him.”

My father brings a spoonful of soup to his mouth and dabs his lips with his napkin. “The point is this: With the grades Jacob gets in school, he should be studying, not selling. This one can sell his own raffle tickets. Maybe the kid you punched will take a few. His parents too.”

“Who did Asher punch?” Dara says.

“I want puuuunch,” Gabe says to my mother.

“You have juice right there.”

“No, Mommy.”

“Gabriel,” she says. “Sit back down and eat your dinner. We don’t have any punch in the house.”

I see my father look my way as he reaches for more challah. “Besides, Jacob tells me he’s doing wonderfully at his new school.” He peeks at my brother. “The kids like him, the teacher
likes him. Not a scuffle for miles. Says he’s gonna change things around, right? Start anew.”

I put a carrot in my mouth and stare down at my plate.

“Sometimes,” my mother says, with her hand on mine, “change is the perfect medicine for—”

“You want to go to a real college someday, right?”

“Yes.”

“Like where?”

“Michigan.”

“I want to go to Michigan too,” Dara says.

A laugh seeps from Asher’s lips. “It’s the only college he’s ever heard of.”

“No it isn’t,” I tell him.

“This one,” he says, pointing at Asher with his thumb, “an
adult
in the eyes of the Lord and he can’t think of anything to be grateful for in life.”

“I told you what I was grateful for. You just didn’t like it.”

“The doodler. Doodles all day long and rides his skateboard. ‘How’s your bar mitzvah boy doing, Abram?’ ‘Well, today he drew a cow skull in one of his fifty notebooks. How’s
your
son, Irv?’ ‘Well, he’s in all AP classes and he’s going to Israel this summer.’”

“That’s what you want from me?” Asher says.

“Enough,” he says, waving his hand.

“You want me in
Israel,
Dad?”

“Asher drew something beautiful today,” my mother says. “All in pencil, it’s this montage of—”

“Oh, that’s just . . . my son the doodler. He can take over for Charles M. Schulz. Draw . . . Snoopys and things for a living.”

“Abram. I really don’t like that.”

“You really don’t like
what,
Claire?”

My father tosses his fork on his plate. Everyone but Gabriel looks down at their food.

My father waits.

Three . . . four . . . five . . . six . . .

“Not now,” she says gently, and resumes eating.

My father nods his head, his eyes still pinned on my mother.

“Did you ever get back to that fella at the dry cleaners?” he asks.

“Yes. They said they’re still looking. The vest, right? The blue?”

My father slowly blinks his eyes. “The vest that goes with the
suit,
Claire. I told you eight times which vest.”

“They said they’re still looking.”

“If you can’t remember something as simple as a color, I’ll help you. I’ll get the jacket right now.”

“Don’t go now, Abram. Eat your food.”

My father stands and walks quickly from the room. My mother touches the corners of her mouth with her napkin and follows him. We all stop eating to watch her leave.

“Mom?” I say.

“I’ll be right back,” she says from the door.

“He’s gonna rip her in two,” Asher mumbles.

“Don’t say that,” I say.

“Don’t tell me what to say.”

I point at Gabe and Dara. “You’re gonna teach them that.”

“Mind your own fuckin’ business.”

“I’m telling Dad you said ‘fuckin’,’” Dara says, and slaps Gabriel’s hand away from her food. “Get a
way,
Gabe.”

“I don’t give two shits what you do,” Asher says.

“I’m telling Dad you said ‘two shits,’” she says.

“Great. Throw this in while you’re at it.” He stands and begins to unbuckle his pants.

“Asher, don’t.” I say.

“Look who’s scared.”

“I’m not scared.”

“Yes, you are. You’re fuckin’ scared. You’re scared to death.”

“Why are you trying to make him mad?” I ask.

“Why are you trying to make him
proud?
Michigan. You know he wants to hear that.”

We stop as we hear him holler upstairs. I turn that way and stare at the door. It’s a thunderous and sudden bark, as familiar as any learned prayer. “I’m not trying to make him proud,” I say.

“Oh, you’re not? Mr. Michigan. You tell him what he wants to hear.”

“You’re no different. You don’t stand up to him.”

We hear them coming down the stairs. Asher buckles his belt and sits down.

My father walks back in the room, his napkin flapping from his collar. My mother follows slowly behind, her face a pallid stone. She smiles at me as she passes, mostly with her eyes, and I think to touch her, but know it’s a mistake. She lifts her fork and brings a carrot into her mouth to chew but not taste. Underneath the table, I rest my finger on her knee.

“I have an announcement,” my father says, pulling his chair close to his plate. “Tomorrow morning I want to clean this entire house. Every inch. There is
so
much crap lying around it’s making me
sick!
I want to be unpacked. I mean every single box and every single thing put away. If I even
see
a box tomorrow night there’s gonna be trouble. We’ll sort out the attic, the closets, the garage, all your rooms, and take everything we don’t need to the dump. Jacob and Dara, your job is to bag all the clothes and toys you no longer use and make your rooms spotless. Asher, you are to begin the day by cleaning every
bathroom in the house. Got it? Hello? You in there? If I see a single hair on the toilet seat I’ll know exactly who to contact. We’ll do it as a team, we’ll do it as a family. No one leaves or makes plans before this place shines, yes? Help me write my gratefuls for next week’s Shabbat. I’m grateful we’re finally unpacked and there’s some order around here. Who in God’s name put those wet towels in the laundry room? They smell like one of Aunt Ida’s wigs dipped in piss.”

A laugh seeps from my lips. Asher tries to prevent it too, but he can’t; he lowers his head. My father’s eyes light up from the reaction. He smiles from ear to ear. He grips the back of Asher’s neck, then ruffles his hair. “Okay, Greens? If cleanliness is next to godliness, then tomorrow we meet the Lord!”

“Yeaaaah,” says Gabriel, and claps his sticky hands.

With the textured tradition of his ancestors
and with the great and overflowing pride of his parents,
Jacob Philip Green will be called to the Torah
to become a Bar Mitzvah.

Please share with us in our unfettered delight
as we celebrate the manhood of our beautiful
blond boy. November the first,
nineteen hundred and eighty at nine o’clock.
Temple Beth Tikvah
in Piedmont, New Jersey.

Three years later and just like that, my brother is finished with me. He’s done sharing his time, his porn, his tunes, his angst, his friends, his room, and his filthy language with me. I can hear his music every day from outside his locked bedroom door. The Boomtown Rats, UFO, the Surf Punks, Squeeze, the Plasmatics, Missing Persons, Jethro Tull, the Cars, Devo, Sex Pistols, AC/DC, Judas Priest, and a fat and sweaty rocker named Meatloaf. I get glimpses of him. “Sightings” are what I call them. Running down the stairs, kneeling into the refrigerator, hunkering down behind a tall box of Lucky Charms with shoulders slumped, slurping like a banshee. I sometimes see him with all his skate-punk friends or this girl he likes who my father calls a shiksa. Her name is Brigitte and
Asher’s friend Nicky tells me, “She’s a slutty Catholic chick that can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch.” When I ask Jonny what the hell this means he says, “A slut is a hooker and a hooker’s a whore.” Asher keeps her as far from the family as possible.

Rule Number 6 of the Green House Rules

As it states in the Torah, Deuteronomy 7:1–5, “You shall not intermarry with any Hittittes, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, or Jebisites. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from me in order to worship other gods—and the Lord’s anger will blaze forth against you and he will promptly wipe you out.”