One Last Thing Before I Go

journey through the birth canal, and then thrust mercilessly into the cold harsh light of the world. And now, eight days later, just as he’s begun to develop a taste for breast milk and oxygen and is thinking that he might be able to make a go of things here, a strange man is going to pull down his diaper and take a scalpel to his minuscule cock.
    Silver has to clamp down on the overpowering urge to snatch him from his wax-dummy grandmother, tuck him under his arm like a football, and run him to safety. The baby’s mother, Susie, is on the fence. Silver is almost positive this sort of disturbance will be enough to make her reconsider the whole enterprise. She is in her late twenties, pretty and plump, and he’s pretty sure, reading her expression, that this was not her idea. She converted to Judaism in order to marry Evan, which probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but now her son will pay the price. Evan stands at the head of the room, between Ruben and the mohel, in a designer suit and a large black yarmulke, creased and worn askew to demonstrate that he normally doesn’t wear one. He watches as his son is carried in, feeling proud and not a little smug in this large, conspicuously expensive house that is a monument to both his wealth and his need for everyone to see it. He is circumcising his son for his father, who circumcised him for his father, who survived the concentration camps. Or else, because Evan feels an innate subconscious need for his son’s dick to resemble his own. And thus, the ritual endures, even among the lapsed Jews and their shiksa wives, thanks to a complex, self-perpetuating loop of guilt, narcissism, and daddy issues.
    The feel of Denise’s body against his, her tears soaking his neck, the overall sense that right there, in that moment, she needed him. No one has needed him for a very long time.
    The baby is passed to Evan’s father, who sits down on the designated chair while the mohel bends over him, muttering in a slew of Hebrew blessings. Silver looks around the room at the gathered friends and relatives, all smiling and taking pictures, and the absurdity of the entire thing washes over him. A group of civilized, upper-middle-class Americans getting together for some routine genital mutilation, followed by coffee and bagels. He’s pretty sure he saw an omelet station out there on the patio as well.
    In his admittedly limited experience, he has come to identify two kinds of mohels: those who believe they are carrying out a sacred rite, and those who couldn’t get into medical school. The way this mohel snaps on his latex gloves and unfurls his instrument roll with a flourish leads Silver to believe he is definitely in the latter category. He is in his early forties, clean-shaven, and clearly enjoys this moment in the spotlight. He pulls out his scalpel, studies it for a moment, and then leans over the baby and reaches in. The room goes blurry, and Silver realizes that he’s in danger of passing out. He leans back against the wall and closes his eyes.
    Denise’s face, inches from his own, her eyes red, her lips quivering, a trembling in his chest he hadn’t felt in years. She was looking at him and he was looking right back at her, and that may not sound like much, but for the first time in years, they were seeing each other.
    The first uncircumcised penis he ever saw belonged to James Nevins. He caught sight of it in the boys’ locker room while they were changing for gym in the fourth grade. James had his shorts around his ankles—was trying to step into them without removing his sneakers, a task that left him exposed for a good thirty seconds or so. James’s thin, flapping member waved back and forth like the pendulum of a metronome, and it looked to Silver like someone had chopped off his tip. He immediately pictured a variety of horrifying, if farfetched, household accidents and, more vitally, wondered how the boy urinated. “What’s the matter, you never seen a dick before?” James snapped at him, and he realized he was staring.
    “What happened to it?” he blurted out.
    “Nothing happened to it, shithead,” Jimmy said.
    He doesn’t remember what he said after that, but it led to his getting punched in the face for the first time. Two firsts in the span of one minute. That was a big day.
    Even now, he can taste the blood on his tongue, and he opens his eyes just as the baby starts to wail. The mohel, having made his cut, shouts out a blessing in