Saving Elijah

Dad. Every night after dinner since the summer began, Dad and I had gone for a walk through the neighborhood. He’d even told my mother once when she asked if she could join us that it was a special father-and-daughter walk, and would she mind if we went, just the two of us? She said she didn’t and I was glad for that, because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, even though she sometimes hurt mine.
    I loved the way the houses in that neighborhood were the same, except they were painted different colors and some had porches and some didn’t. It was interesting to me because on the inside everything was so different. Not just the way the people looked, but how they thought, who they were, the rules they lived by. Mrs. Lippincott made her daughter Angela take fifteen vitamins every day. Julie’s mom lit candles for being Jewish every Friday night, without fail. My mom believed in charity and justice, and took off from work two times every month to sit with sick people at the hospital, participated in our synagogue’s Tzedakah, serving dinner at the homeless shelter, collecting soup cans for the poor.
    The houses were close to the street so at night you could see right into the rooms, as if the people had turned on the lights to show anyone outside what they were doing. All four McGregors were always watching television, and Mrs. Posner was always cleaning, and Mrs. Samuels sat alone. Julie and I called her the witch because she was mean when you came on her lawn but at night you could see she was just a lonely old lady. That night Mrs. Lapidus was sitting with Mrs. Posner at the Lapiduses’ kitchen table.
    “Where’s Mr. Lapidus?” I said. Mr. Lapidus was always tinkering in his garage with the door up, and you could see the hammers and wrenches hung on the pegboard behind him, the bicycles, spare tires, and Hula Hoops in the corner. He used to smile when you passed and say, “Nice night.”
    “He and Mrs. Lapidus are getting a divorce,” Dad said.
    “Why?”
    He shrugged. “It’s not our business, Dinah.”
    “I know why,” I said. “It’s because Mr. Lapidus was supposed to meet his mistress at the airport and they were going to fly off to Tahiti because it’s true love. But Mrs. Lapidus found the note Mr. Lapidus wrote and killed his lover and hid her behind the wall in the basement. And so when Mr. Lapidus didn’t see her at the airport, he came home but he had to leave again because he kept hearing her heart beating in the basement, louder and louder and it scared him to death.” I had just read “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
    My father smiled happily. He was proud of me. “You certainly have an imagination, Dinah.”
    I shrugged. “But Dan’s smarter. Mom thinks he is.”
    “No, she doesn’t, Dinah. Your mother loves you.”
    “Sometimes it doesn’t seem that way.”
    “She just gets upset sometimes. Sometimes you deserve it, you know.” His face was stern, and I liked it better when he had his arm around me. We walked in silence for a while.
    “Maybe you should be a writer,” Dad said suddenly. “Since you like to make up stories. And read them, too.”
    “But I like real stories a lot more.”
    He laughed. “ ‘Real’ is a funny word. You can take the very same event and two different people might experience it and remember so differently that when you hear them both tell about it, it’s hard to say which version is real and which isn’t.”
    My father was a reticent man, almost shy, but he was also quite thoughtful. I wondered what went through his mind when my mother went crazy and screamed at me. It must have been so different from what I was thinking.

    *    *    *

    “How long do you think I could stay at your house?” I asked Julie now in the park. We were down on our backs again, pine needles digging into our skin through our cotton shirts.
    “At least until next year.” She propped herself up again. “Hey, who’s Ten Ton Tessie, anyway?”
    “Well, how the heck should I know?”
    Both of us burst into giggles, and pretty soon we were laughing so hard we were rolling around in the pine needles, holding our bellies, begging for mercy.
    “Jules?” I sat all the way up, serious now. I loved her so much. “Let’s make a pact that we’ll always be together. We’ll always know everything about each other, and always be friends. No matter what. Even if we get married.”
    She made a face. “Forget it, I’m not getting married. I already told