Since You Left Me Read online

“Yoga center meeting,” she says.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I got home from gymnastics, and she texted me that there was curry tofu for dinner in the fridge. If she asks, we ate it and loved it.”

  “Could you look at her calendar?”

  She moans.

  “It’s important,” I say.

  “What’s so important?”

  “Excuse me,” a professor says as she walks through the gymnasium. “No cell phones.”

  B-Jew has a strict no-cell-phone policy. Strict is an understatement.

  “I’m just calling my mother,” I say to her. “It’s an emergency.”

  “No. A bomb on a bus in Tel Aviv is an emergency. Your cell phone is a nuisance.” She points to the door.

  I run outside.

  “Look at Mom’s calendar, Sweet Caroline,” I say. “Please. I’m in a bind here.”

  “What kind of bind?”

  “A bad one.”

  “Details. I need details.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I like to hear you suffering.”

  I think of a few choice things I’d like to say to her, but I keep them to myself.

  “We’ve got parent-professor conferences tonight,” I say.

  “Ohhhh,” Sweet Caroline says, like she understands without me saying another word.

  I hear her walking into the kitchen. It sounds crazy, but I’m sort of hoping there’s nothing on the calendar. Maybe Mom didn’t forget. Maybe it’s my fault because I forgot to remind her.

  “The calendar says juice fast,” Sweet Caroline says.

  “That’s it?”

  “Wait. There’s a big arrow pointing from today to a card on the refrigerator. Parent-professor conference for Sanskrit. 5:30 p.m. There are about fifteen exclamation marks.”

  “I know. I wrote it.”

  So Mom outright forgot. Or she remembered and didn’t care enough to show up. Either way, I’m screwed.

  “No Mom?” Sweet Caroline says.

  “No Mom,” I say.

  “Did you call Dad?”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “He might come.”

  “Yeah, if I was in the emergency room.”

  “You’re right. You are screwed,” she says.

  You’d expect a tiny bit of understanding from your own sister. It’s not like I’m the only one who’s ever been screwed over by Mom in our family. On her last birthday, Mom surprised Sweet Caroline with a vegan cake that said Happy Eleventh!

  Slight problem: Sweet Caroline was twelve.

  Despite it all, Sweet Caroline walks around like she doesn’t have a problem in the world, like she’s got a loving family that shows up for her no matter what. But she’s got the same family I have. The one that has her picking at herself so much she got sent to a psychologist.

  “Sanskrit?” she says.

  “What?”

  “Better you than me.”

  She hangs up.

  I look back towards school. Herschel is coming out the front door, his suit panels flapping in the wind.

  “What’s happening here?” he says.

  “I’m taking a cigarette break.”

  “Very funny. Where’s your mom?”

  “Two guesses. Both involve tights and a gong.”

  “Did you call her?”

  “Forty-seven times.”

  “Your father?”

  “Jesus, Herschel.”

  “Language,” he says.

  “I’m sorry. Jesus H. Christ, Esquire.”

  He looks at me deadpan.

  That would have made him laugh in the old days. You’re not supposed to take the Lord’s name in vain, so when we swore, we’d add an honorific. Like instead of saying, “Oh, God!” we’d say, “Oh, Doctor God!” Or “God, Master of the Universe, damn it!”

  In the old days it was funny. Herschel used to hate Jewish school as much as I did. That was before he went to Israel and got flipped. That’s what we call it when kids visit Israel and find God. One look at the Western Wall, and they think they’re Maimonides.

  These days Herschel’s sense of humor has been overwhelmed by the study of Torah. Not a lot of laughs in Torah class.

  “Call your father,” Herschel says.

  “No.”

  “This is serious. You’re on thin ice with the administration.”

  “Maybe this is my ticket out.”

  “We’re all out after next year.

  Think about college,” Herschel says. “Think about Brandeis.”

  A cramp seizes my stomach. Brandeis. A Jewish university without much Judaism, all the way on the other side of the country. My ticket to freedom. But I need the grades to get there.

  “Do you want me to call your dad for you?” Herschel says.

  “I’m a big boy,” I say.

  Just then Barry Goldwasser pokes his head out the back door.

  “Sanskrit!” he shouts. “They’re looking for you.”

  Here’s Barry to save the day again. I swear, the guy thinks he’s Jewish Superman. What’s worse is that he knows I can’t stand him, but he doesn’t care. He’s one of those guys who likes you even when you don’t like him. Such is the incredible generosity of spirit by which he lives. It’s nauseating.

  “Could you tell them I’ll be there in a minute?” I say.

  Barry says, “Your family is in turmoil. You have to confront it sooner or later.”

  I flip Barry the bird.

  “Look where your finger is pointing,” he says.

  I look up.

  “God can handle your family problems, Sanskrit. Not me.”

  “Screw you, Barry. And screw God.”

  He shakes his head like I’m a lost cause.

  I take a big step towards the door like I’m ready to fight Barry for my family’s honor. But he’s already gone.

  “Can you believe that?” I say to Herschel.

  “Your dad,” he says, completely unfazed by Barry or anything else.

  I stare at Dad’s number on my phone. I imagine me asking—and Dad turning me down with a lame excuse like he usually does. It’s too much for me right now.

  I turn off the phone.

  “What are you going to do?” Herschel says.

  “Take the hit. Like I always do.”

  I walk back into the gym through the crowd of parents and students. They’ve all had their conferences now, but it’s tradition to stick around and socialize until everyone’s parents have had their turn. That means they’re all waiting for me.

  I glance at the snacks table. It’s looking pretty scarce over there. Once the snacks run out, there will be a riot.

  The Israeli office lady sees me and gestures for me to hurry.

  I glance to my left, and I see a girl. Not just any girl.

  The Initials.

  In God’s case, we don’t say his name as a sign of respect. In her case, it’s because it’s too painful.

  The Initials is standing with her parents. She looks gorgeous. Her mom looks gorgeous.

  I catch myself staring, and I look away. It’s like looking into the sun. If you become distracted by the majesty, you’ll burn out your retinas.

  “Sanskri—” the office lady starts to say.

  “Coming,” I say.

  “Your mother?”

  I shake my head.

  Can breasts look disappointed? Maybe I’m imagining it.

  “Follow me,” she says, and we walk in silence down the hall.

  She stops in front of the large conference room. She opens the door and holds it for me.

  I step into the room.

  All my professors are sitting there. They look past me to the door, expecting an adult to walk in behind me.

  But it’s just me.

  “Aaron,” the dean says. He always calls me by my middle name. The Jewish-sounding one. Sometimes he even pronounces it in Hebrew, like Ah-roan.

  “You’re not wearing your kippah,” he says.


  “Sorry,” I say.

  Kippot are required to be on our heads at all times in school. Some kids wear them out of school as well, but I don’t like to wear mine at all, so I usually stuff it in my pocket.

  I pull it out. I’ve got a tiny one the same color as my hair so you barely notice it.

  “Where’s your mother?” the dean says.

  I look across the table of professors, all of them staring back at me. Professor Hirschberg glares at me below a severe unibrow. The dean sighs.

  “We’ve talked about this numerous times,” he says. “The Family Contract …”

  I think about all the times I’ve made excuses for Mom, all the embarrassment I’ve suffered.

  I’m ready to take the hit again. I always take the hit.

  I’m about to apologize on Mom’s behalf, when I’m overcome with anger. No more hits. No more embarrassment.

  I don’t tell the teachers that my mother forgot or that she’s stuck in another appointment.

  Instead I say, “There’s been a terrible accident.”

  The entire room gasps. Professor Schwartzburg, my English teacher, clutches his chest. He’s been doing that a lot lately. In fact, there’s a betting pool on the next professor to have a heart attack, and Schwartzburg is in the lead.

  I say, “I don’t have all the details yet. I’m waiting to get an update from the hospital.”

  I don’t know why I’m saying any of this, but I’m not exactly in my right mind. When I think about it later, I realize I should not have used the word terrible to describe the accident. It’s hard to recover from terrible. If you say accident and you want to backtrack later and claim it was a fender bender, you’re okay. But it’s very hard to get from terrible back to minor.

  But I tell the professors Mom was in a terrible accident, and after the initial shock and several oy veys, Professor Feldshuh leaps up and takes matters into his own hands.

  “I’ll give you a ride to the hospital!” he says.

  I say, “No thank you, sir. I have a ride.”

  All the professors are on their feet then, reaching for me, patting my shoulder, offering their support, and asking if there’s anything they can do.

  “I have to go,” I say. “Right now.”

  “I’ll pray for you,” Professor Skurnick says.

  She puts a hand on her chest and pats herself. I make a quick note to check her rank in the heart attack pool.

  Then I rush out of the room.

  The Israeli office lady jumps out of my way.

  I run back through the gymnasium. There are startled reactions all around me. Maybe they think something awful happened in my conference, like I’m being suspended or expelled.

  I can’t worry about it right now.

  I keep my head down and rush out the door, inadvertently slamming it behind me.

  Professor Schwartzburg says you should never end a sentence with an exclamation point. He calls it overkill.

  But in life, ending with an exclamation point feels good.

  I just never knew it before.

  I hate my mother.

  This is not a very Jewish thought to be having. Some might say it’s a sin. After all, the commandment tells us, Honor your mother and your father. As Herschel says, “They’re called the Ten Commandments, not the Ten Suggestions.”

  Honor. Maybe that was easier to do three thousand years ago.

  It’s not easy now. Not with my family.

  I’m sitting in the dark in our kitchen waiting for Mom to come home. I’m supposed to be honoring her, but I hate her. I make a list in my head: Top Reasons I Hate My Mother. When I get to number twenty, I stop. The list is supposed to make me feel better, but the more things I add, the angrier I get.

  I say out loud, “I don’t care if my mother never comes home. I don’t care if she was in a car accident for real. I don’t care if she’s gone forever.”

  Who am I talking to?

  Not HaShem. You’re not supposed to say bad things about people to God.

  You don’t wish your enemies dead, much less your own mother. Jews are craftier than that when it comes to their prayers. Jews wish their enemies well. For example, in Yiddish you say, gey gezunt, which means something like “Go in good health.” You might say that to a friend or family member you love. But you can use the same phrase for someone you hate. If you say gey gezunt to someone you hate, it’s like telling them to go to hell.

  Maybe HaShem will appreciate that I’m speaking directly rather than cloaking my real thoughts in euphemisms. Maybe I’ll get some credit for honesty.

  But probably not.

  Probably he’s going to be pissed, and he’s brewing up a special tragedy for me.

  That’s if I believed in God in the first place. If God doesn’t exist, what does it matter what you say? You could say anything, do anything. And the 613 Jewish mitzvahs, the rules that every devout Jew is supposed to follow and around which we organize our lives? They might be just a waste of time.

  That thought makes me all the more depressed.

  I don’t know what’s worse, a God who punishes you for doing the wrong thing, or a God who doesn’t care at all.

  I pace back and forth in the kitchen. The clock says 9:30 p.m. It’s not unusual for Mom to be out so late and have her phone off. She teaches night classes sometimes or has meetings at the Center. We come home to some form of vegetarian stew in the refrigerator or a twenty-dollar bill on a plate on the table, partially covered by a napkin with a heart drawn on it. Mom’s not totally irresponsible. More like totally self-involved.

  But for her to outright miss my conference with all that’s been going on at school?

  That’s unusual.

  Sweet Caroline wants nothing to do with any of this. She’s already in bed reading or doing homework, completely unperturbed by the fact that my life is falling apart. This is one of those times you want to present a united front as siblings. We could form a familial picket line, demand Mom be home at certain times, demand that she attend our events. Force her to stop cooking the stews. We could make this our last stand.

  But Sweet Caroline and I haven’t stood together in a long time. I can’t even remember the last time we did anything together, just the two of us.

  My phone buzzes.

  It’s my eighteenth call since leaving school. None of them have been from Mom.

  Six of the messages have been from Herschel’s number. Another four from the main line at school. The rest of them from numbers I don’t know. I listened to one, and it was a worried Professor Schwartzburg calling from his cell phone. Teachers never call students from their own phones.

  Which means my lie really had an impact. The phone vibrates and call number eighteen goes to voice mail.

  On one level it’s nice to know people care. On another level, I’m not sure anybody cares. They’re doing a mitzvah, a good deed. In the face of tragedy, Jews snap into action. Someone is injured in a car accident, someone is sick, someone dies—we’re there with phone calls, kind words, and noodle kugel.

  Jews love tragedy. It’s in our DNA.

  It’s the day-to-day stuff that proves more challenging.

  Just then I hear Mom’s key in the front door.

  She walks in humming one of the meditation pieces she listens to constantly. I don’t know the name of it. It’s less a song than a chant that endlessly repeats itself until you either surrender to it or go insane.

  Mom comes into the kitchen without noticing me. In one arm she has the Trader Joe’s tote bag with her yoga mat tied to its side, and in the other she has a big bag of fluff-and-fold from the dry cleaners. Mom lets the wash stack up until she gets overwhelmed, then she has no choice but to spend money to have someone else do it. At least it gets done.

  Mom drops the laundry on the floor, hums her way over to the refrigerator, and grabs a miniature carton of organic apple juice. She tears open the plastic on the straw with her teeth and pops it into the box of juice—

  “
Mom.”

  “Oh!” she shouts, and jumps back. The box falls and shoots a splatter of droplets onto the floor.

  “You scared me, Sanskrit,” she said.

  She takes three deep breaths, centering herself like she always does. Then she grabs a wet rag to clean the spill. No paper towels in our house. They’re bad for the environment.

  “Why are you sitting in the dark?” Mom says. “It’s not good for your eyes.”

  “I’m waiting for you.”

  Mom scrunches her eyebrows. “Waiting for me to what?”

  “Close the refrigerator door,” I say.

  She swings the door shut. Then she shrugs.

  “Look on the door,” I say.

  “What am I looking at? Do we need miso?”

  I flip on the kitchen light. I walk over and put my finger on the reminder card. Then I point to the Family Education Contract, stuck to the door with a karma boomerang magnet.

  “Oh my gosh, is it Wednesday?” Mom says.

  I nod.

  “Sweetie, did I miss it?”

  “You missed it.”

  “I’m so sorry. I’m out of my mind with this juice fast. Honestly, I don’t know who I am right now. I’m running from classes to the bathroom and back. I’d give anything for a nice solid number two.”

  “Maybe food would help.”

  “Tomorrow,” she says, her face lighting up. “My eleven days is up. I can’t wait to chew something!”

  Mom reaches down to clean up the spill. She doesn’t bend over like a normal person. She drops into a squat, her butt practically hitting the floor.

  “How did the school thing go?” she says to me. She slurps hard from the juice pack.

  “Not well,” I say. “It’s difficult to have a parent-professor conference without a parent.”

  “Did you take notes?”

  “You don’t get it, Mom. It didn’t happen.”

  “Why couldn’t you do it and give me a report like you always do? Fill me in, honey. You’re good at that.”

  “They don’t tell me how I’m doing. They need a responsible adult for that.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?” She takes out her phone and looks at it. “Oops. My phone was off. I didn’t even realize it.”

  She turns it on.

  “Mom, this is really serious. They’re going to throw us out of school.”

  “Why would they do that? With the amount of money we pay?”