Suddenly, my screen became a field of backlit blackness, and then it blipped and I was in. I had 248 new messages, every one of them titled “RE: FWD: NEW SCRIPTURE.”
The thumbs in the corner continued to twiddle.
Her name’s Eliza June Watermark, I said to the scholars.
And all of them leaned in, and none of them looked at me funny.
Flowers came back with the pizza in the middle of the story, so I told the rest of it in the kitchen, the rapt scholars pointing at slices and nodding at liter bottles, flicking their eyes in the direction of napkins and chinning at packets of parmesan and pepper flakes. They didn’t squint once — not when I told them I never loved Esther, or even when I described the conversion on the stage. With the exception of a couple whispered mazel tovs, no voice but my own was audible til I finished.
Then Emmanuel suggested a metaphorical kinship between June’s Gurion-independent invention of the pennygun and the desert monotheism Zipporah had practiced before she met Moses which was, itself, Emmanuel insisted, certainly akin to the righteousness of the matriarchs in the days before they met and wed the patriarchs.
Samuel wanted to know when they’d receive the new scripture.
Solly wondered whether June had friends, or maybe sisters.
Shai asked what they should tell the other scholars about visiting me after Havdallah, and then Samuel asked Shai how he could fail to notice I’d risen from my chair and shown them my back.
Samuel had me wrong, though. Their reaction to the story had been perfect, the reaction I’d’ve wanted most from anyone, and it made me feel artful — in describing the moments leading up to the conversion, I’d skipped all mention of mine and June’s birthmarks. So the reason I’d risen was to go to the sink, to scrub the makeup from my thumbs and reveal the yuds, not doubting for a second that my mom would understand. These were the last four brothers in the world who’d trample me.
Yet as they rose from their own chairs, apologizing for outstaying their welcome, expressing their gratitude for my “patience and hospitality in the midst of upsetting events” (Emmanuel), assuring me and each other that I’d answered enough of their questions for one day, “the longest day I’ve ever heard of outside Irish literature” (Samuel), I saw they were right — not right that I felt stretched or put out by their visit, but right that I’d already said enough.
One time, at the Frontier, Flowers and I watched this show about pets where a dog did the moonwalk when its owner held its elbows. It was so weird and funny it got all over the web. Within a couple days, someone CGI’d the owner out and gave the dog a hat it doffed with a diamond-studded paw. We agreed the doctored video wasn’t as funny as the original — it wasn’t really funny at all — except I didn’t get why til Flowers explained it. He said, “Gild the lily, the stem collapse.”
It was the right explanation. And if faith and trust worked anything like comedy, which I suspected they did — I suspected most good things did — then the reason I wanted to show the scholars the yuds could just as easily be a reason not to show them the yuds. That is: They already believed June was an Israelite, and they believed it because I told them she was. So while the revelation of my birthmarks, which aspired to hard evidence, might strengthen that belief, it might also insult their intelligence, damage their faith, and thereby endanger (structurally and otherwise) the integrity of the stem from which their trust blossomed.
I followed them out of the kitchen without a word or a gesture. It is true they were mistaken about outstaying their welcome — their visit made me feel much better, kept me from staring into my head at my falling father’s image, or at least from ceaselessly doing so — but it was, nonetheless, still time for them to go, time now to stare at that image excessively, to work myself up to interrogate my dad. I was angry at him, but not angry enough, and it was already 8:00, he’d have to come home soon. Plus, the later the scholars stayed, the more likely it got that they’d be interrogated. I knew they’d never fink on me or each other, but silence could get them grounded too, yet if I told them that, they’d only say grounding was a small price to pay, then attempt to stick around to prove that they meant it. Better if they thought they’d overstayed their welcome.
I have to make some decisions, I told them, but I’ll send word before Shabbos on what’s to come. Tell everyone we know to lay low til then.
All of them but Emmanuel were bundled. He’d gotten everything on except for his boots, then sat on the floor to attempt doomed contortions. Unable to reach past his knees, he rose and shed his entire wooly bulk — overcoat, pullover, hat, scarf, and gloves — then sat back down and pulled on the boots, the laces of which kept slipping from his fingers. The others, in the meantime, overheated. Shifting their weight from foot to foot, they tucked their toplips and extended their bottom ones to aim huffy air at their darkening foreheads.
“Go ahead,” Emmanuel told them.
“We’re fine,” said Samuel. “Just hurry.”
“No, really,” said Emmanuel, “I have to stop at the pharmacy anyway.”
“For what?” Shai said.
“You don’t ask for what when it’s the pharmacy,” said Samuel.
“Why not?” said Shai.
“Because maybe he’s got a fungus or the runs,” offered Solly.
“Do you have a fungus or the runs?” said Shai to Emmanuel.
“You don’t ask that, Shai,” said Samuel.
“I bet Solly’s right, though. Look how silent Emmanuel’s being suddenly. He’s almost as silent as Solly,” said Shai. “We’ve come to expect that from Solly, silence, but silence we don’t readily associate with Emmanuel. It might be he’s been suffering all along. Suffering in silence. An uncharacteristic silence indicative of a medical unpleasantness. We’re all among friends, though, and what’s a fungus among friends? Who hasn’t had the runs? I’ve had the runs, we’ve all had the runs. You know what it is that my dad calls the runs? It’s the trots, what he calls them. My dad calls the runs the trots.”