This Is Where I Leave You

being Saturday, the laws of shiva are suspended, all outward signs of mourning put aside in honor of the Sabbath. Boner stops by to give us the news. He is dressed in a dark suit with a black shirt and looks ready to go out clubbing.
    “You are still in mourning, of course,” he says. “But there will be no visitors today, no outward observance of shiva.”
    “So, it’s like a day off,” I say.
    “Not quite,” he says. He looks at my mother, who nods, and then looks back at us. “This morning, you’ll all come to temple to say Kaddish at morning services.”
    “Kaddish?”
    “The prayer for the soul of the departed.”
    “Why can’t we say it here?” Paul says.
    “Kaddish is said responsively. It can only be said with a minyan, a quorum of at least ten men present to respond.”
    Paul looks at his childhood friend exasperatedly. Give me a break!
    But Boner just looks back and shrugs. I don’t make the rules. Paul blinks first. “When do services start?”
    Boner checks his watch. “In twenty-five minutes. You’d better get dressed.”

    8:15 a.m.
    The suit I wore to the funeral has been lying on the basement floor in a crumpled heap ever since, so Mom brings me up to her bedroom and picks out one of Dad’s suits for me. Dad only ever wore two kinds of suits: midnight blue and black. When I try on the black one Mom has chosen it fits perfectly, except for the slacks being an inch or so too short. I am somewhat surprised, because I’ve always seen him as taller than me. I never got close enough to know better. Every so often, based on the tick of some internal clock, Dad would randomly decide to bring us all to temple on Saturday morning. “Get showered,” he would say. “Sport jacket and tie.” And Paul and I would grumble as we dressed. On these occasions Wendy was allowed to use Mom’s makeup, so we’d all end up waiting in the living room while she fussed with her blush and rouge and Mom dolled up little Phillip in the androgynous sailor outfits that Dad worried would make him gay. The yarmulkes in the olivewood box at the entrance to the sanctuary were black and constructed from nylon so insubstantial that a light draft from the air-conditioning vents was enough to launch them off our curly hair like hang gliders. Mom would fasten them to our hair with bobby pins while Dad threw a prayer shawl yellowed with age over his shoulders like a scarf. Then we’d follow him into the sanctuary, pausing every few feet as he stopped to shake someone’s hand and say, “Good shabbos.” We would follow suit, shaking the large cracked hands of these men, inhaling the clean scents of their aftershave and breath mints. Rabbi Buxbaum would come down from his seat to greet us warmly, his smile obscured by his silver handlebar mustache. “Gentlemen,” he would say with a wink, pressing hard butterscotch candies into our palms as he shook our hands, “and I use the term loosely.”
    Within ten minutes Mom would have to take Phillip outside to run through the halls of the Hebrew school we’d all sporadically attended, and Dad would close his eyes and rock lightly in his seat, humming along with the cantor to the liturgical melodies he recalled from his own loosely affiliated youth. Paul would make a goal out of two spread fingers at the edge of his prayer book, and I would attempt to fl ick my crumpled candy wrapper in. If Dad caught us he would smack the backs of our heads and tell us to knock it off. Wendy sat upright, crossing and uncrossing her legs, studying the women’s dresses and mannerisms, scanning the rows for cute boys.
    When services were over, there would be sacramental wine and light refreshments in the social hall. While my parents chatted with the other adults over creamed herring and pastries, Paul and I would sneak little plastic shot glasses of schnapps from the liquor table and try not to gag as it burned its way down our throats. Sometimes a kid would procure a tennis ball and we’d all go out to the lot behind the synagogue to play stickball in our shirtsleeves. By noon we’d be home again, suits hung up, our shirts piled on the dining room table for the dry cleaner, Mom and Dad holed up in their room for an afternoon “nap.” All this happened two, maybe three times a year. There were years when it didn’t happen at all, and then, one Saturday, apropos of nothing, Dad would once again wake us with “Sports jackets and ties, boys. Sports jackets and ties.” It seemed to