June! I said.
“Who?” said Esther Salt.
I said, Esther Salt.
Esther Salt said, “Why don’t you ever call me anymore? You haven’t called me in weeks. I even got Caller ID to make sure I’d know if you called, like in case you didn’t leave a message, and so I know for sure you haven’t, so don’t try to lie.”
You broke up with me, I told her.
“I know,” said Esther, “but I didn’t know that meant we couldn’t talk anymore.”
What did you think it meant? I said.
I said that way too fast and it sounded cold. I didn’t mean it to be cold, though, so I said, All we ever did was talk, Esther, and if all you ever do is talk, then when you break up it means you stop talking.
“We didn’t only talk,” she said. “We’d see each other.”
I said, We still see each other every Wednesday.
She said, “No, that’s not true. You and my dad see each other every Wednesday; you and I just look at each other. Why don’t you say what you really mean?”
There was no way I could think of that Esther could have known about June, and even if she somehow did know about June, I’d fallen in love with June only that day, so there was no way Esther could think I hadn’t called her in weeks because of June, plus it wasn’t why I hadn’t called her in weeks.
What do you mean what I really mean? I said.
“Maybe that I’m too modest. Maybe that I’m not easy enough,” said Esther.
That’s not what I mean at all! I said. I said, I never even tried to hold your hand!
“Exactly,” she said, “because you think I’m too prude for you.”
“Esther,” I said.
“Esther!” said Rabbi Salt in the background.
“What?” she said.
I don’t think you’re prude, I said.
She wasn’t paying attention, though. She didn’t answer me. She was talking to her dad.
Then she said, “Did you get my dad’s email? He sent it twenty minutes ago.”
I said, I don’t know — I haven’t checked.
“He says he sent it and he wants to know if you’re coming over tomorrow to study.”
Tomorrow’s Wednesday.
“What’s that?” she said.
Of course, I said.
“Of course what?” she said.
Of course I’m coming over to study tomorrow.
“He’ll be happy to hear that,” said Esther Salt. She said, “I am going to sleep.” She hung up.
I knew Esther’s feelings were hurt, but I couldn’t see how I could be the one who’d hurt them. She hurt them. She hurt them herself. And she was the one who broke up with me. And I thought that if I called her back out of niceness and June found out, then June would get upset, and even though I knew June wouldn’t find out, I wouldn’t want June calling someone who I wouldn’t want her calling even if I didn’t find out. But then what if it was Berman? Would I mind so much? I couldn’t tell. She said he was a dentist and she’d never kissed him, so if she called him back, it would just be out of niceness. Except if she called him back out of niceness, then wouldn’t I worry it was something other than niceness? Because why would she be nice to someone she thought was a dentist? I wouldn’t want to think about that, I didn’t want to think about it, and I wanted even less to not be able to think about it because I didn’t know about it. I wouldn’t call Esther. I didn’t even want to. I didn’t want to talk to her. I wanted to talk to June, and it wouldn’t be nice of me to call Esther and spend the whole conversation wishing she was June. But I wouldn’t call June, either, I decided. Because of Esther. Because Esther decided I was implying a bunch of things that I wasn’t implying and I didn’t like it, so I didn’t want to do it to June. I didn’t want to do something she wouldn’t like. She’d said not to call back. If what she meant was the opposite of what she said, it wasn’t for me to know.
I went online and got Rabbi Salt’s email. It had all the updated Schechter addresses in the body. After cutting Esther’s out, I pasted the addresses into a new list I cc’d, along with my list of Northside Hebrew Day addresses, and then I wrote this:
Draft Saved: November 14, 2006, 9:49 PM Central-Standard Time
Subject: THE TRUTH ABOUT GURION BEN-JUDAH MACCABEE
From: Gurionforever@yahoo.com (me)
To: Gurionforever@yahoo.com
CC: NEW SCHECHTER LIST, NORTHSIDE HEBREW DAY LIST
Scholars:
I am no more angry at you for avoiding me, for not stopping by or writing or calling, than I was when last I wrote you five months ago. I see no less a difference between avoiding and quitting than I did then, and I have no shallower a well of conviction that you and I must both honor our parents. However, I am troubled by some conclusions that some of you have lately drawn about my recent silence and seeming invisibility. I am troubled by the thought that you have failed to grasp fully the lesson of the weapons you have built.
Your weapons, when not projecting, are silent. Your weapons, when concealed, are seemingly invisible. Most of the time, your weapons aren’t projecting. Most of the time, your weapons are concealed. Do these conditions (unprojecting, concealed) render your weapons ineffective? Would it be correct to say that your weapons, in their silent concealment, are somehow defeated?
No. And no. Your weapons are stealth.
And I am neither dead, nor in prison. I am in love with a red-haired seventh-grader and I attend Aptakisic Junior High School in Deerbrook Park, 60090. There are other Israelites at Aptakisic, but I am unknown to nearly all of them because they aren’t scholars and I spend my days in a cage. These Israelites think themselves Jews, for the arrangement at this school, though operated in part by Israelites, is nonetheless constructed by Canaanites and Romans in whose best interests it is that Israelites fear themselves. Rejoice that you still get to go to Schechter and Northside. I wish we could still be studying together.
And yet I see it is good to be in love, and were I still attending school with you, I could not have fallen in love. I hope to tell you the story one day. I hope that day will be soon.
Soon,
Gurion ben-Judah
I moved the cursor over the SEND button, daring myself to click it, knowing I wouldn’t. I’d known I wouldn’t since halfway through the first paragraph, but had kept writing anyway, hoping the message, completed, would reveal a justification for its own sending. The stated one was legless. Emmanuel Liebman would tell the scholars he’d spoken with me, and they would believe him because he was Emmanuel Liebman. They would know I wasn’t dead or in prison. And simply missing them wasn’t a good enough reason to contact them. If I contacted them, no few would conclude it meant that it was okay for us to be back in contact — it wasn’t. And they would contact me, and I would tell them it was not okay, that it was not yet time for them to disobey their parents, and some of them would listen, but most of them would argue, pointing to the wording I’d used in my “Last Word” email (p. 71), and though I’d eventually convince them, they would, in the meantime — while getting convinced — be breaking a commandment, and I’d be abetting the breakage.
I closed my browser and started writing scripture.
There is love. There was always love, and there will be more love, forever. Were there ever to be less love, we would all be at war, and Your angels would learn suffering.
I stared at these lines for a couple of minutes, then noticed the clock read 10:07—eight minutes til bedtime — and saved the document, shut down my computer, washed up and brushed, and got into bed. I lay there fake-reading Dostoevsky’s Adolescent, which Flowers had given me a couple weeks before.