May We Be Forgiven

Jewish.”
    “Back to the bar mitzvah,” Nate says.
    “There were two tables of gifts, one with my name, one with Solomon’s, and all during the party I kept going over and checking to see whose pile was higher, whose looked better.”
    “And?”
    “It was hard to tell—on account of how someone gave me a set of encyclopedias and wrapped each volume separately. The one thing I really liked was a pair of binoculars that were meant for Solomon but ended up with my gifts.”
    “How did you figure out it was for Solomon?”
    “The card: ‘For Solly, With Love from Auntie Estelle and Uncle Ruven.’ My mother wanted me to give them back to Solomon, but I refused. I took the binoculars and hid them outside, under the house.”
    “Is it unreasonable to expect a rite of passage to feel good or be essentially positive?” Nate asks. “What about losing your virginity?”
    “Look, Nate, I’m a lot older than you. I just don’t want you to be disappointed.”
    “So you pop the bubble now?” he asks. “You make me feel as miserable as you?”
    “No,” I say definitively and then stop. “I just want to protect you.”
    “From what?”
    “Life?” I suggest.
    “Too late,” he says. “Did you ever give the binoculars back to Solomon?”
    “I spilled the whole story to him one day at school. ‘Keep ’em,’ he said, ‘I already have binoculars.’” I pause. “I don’t think I ever told anyone that story before.”
    “Not even Claire?”
    “No.”
    There’s a pause. “Why didn’t you and Claire have children?” Nate asks.
    “Claire was afraid she’d be too cold as a parent; she thought she had no capacity to really love and that a child would suffer.”
    “And?”
    “I agreed.”
    There’s a long pause. “I used to pray,” Nate says. “Every night I said a prayer to cover my bases; I always believed there was something larger—some bigger idea. I’m not sure what I think now; my relationship to belief has changed.”
    “So—I get the feeling that you’re thinking no bar?”
    “I thought it was meant as a conversation.”
    “You’re right. It’s not something we have to resolve tonight.”

    A fter her cover is blown, Amanda of the A&P vanishes.
    Half as a prank, half because I’m genuinely curious, it occurs to me not to wait for her to come to me, but to go to her. I round up the half-empty cartons of Chinese food from the fridge, pack it all into the brown paper bag it came out of several days ago—receipt still attached—and staple it shut. Wearing Nate’s old white lab coat like a waiter’s jacket, I drive to her house, upscale Tudor, and ring the bell.
    “What are you doing here?” she asks, opening the door.
    “I have half-order for you,” I say in a bad Chinese accent as I hand her the bag. Peeking into the house behind her, I see nothing except a faded Oriental rug, a coat-and-hat rack, and a heavy dark wooden banister and stairs—carpeted. I imagine that on the left is the living room, on the right the parlor or dining room, and straight back under the stairs a half-bath, and then the kitchen across the back of the house—with perhaps a breakfast nook.
    “You brought used Chinese food?”
    “There’s a lot of it,” I say. “Fried rice, moo-shu pork.”
    She hands the bag back to me as her mother comes up behind her: thin, with basketball belly pushing at the waistband of her bright-green pull-on pants; formerly tall, now substantially reduced; her fluffy white hair neatly fixed in tight rolls around her head, mid–George Washington.
    “We give to the Kidney Foundation regularly,” the mother says. “My husband doesn’t approve of door-to-door solicitations, but how about some of my pin money—do you take cash?” She clicks open a small wallet and digs out five dollars, which she moves to hand me.
    “Mother, he’s delivering food,” Amanda says, pushing her mother’s arm away. “And he has the wrong address. Better luck next time,” she says, closing the door in my face.
    Out of boredom I try again. In my mind, it’s humorous and demonstrates my determination—I want something more, some better conclusion. I drive to the 7-Eleven and get a gallon of milk and some orange juice and pull up at the curb outside her house. After cutting across the dewy lawn on foot, I hop up onto the front step and ring the bell twice. BING-BONG, BING-BONG.
    Her mother answers the door.
    “I remember you,” she says, and I’m suddenly nervous that I’ve