Chapter Text
POV: Oliver, September 2, 2006
I stood at the mirror with my younger son, Victor, adjusting the boy’s tie and fixing his wavy brown hair. “You look so handsome in that suit, your mother would have loved to see this,” I said, wiping a stray tear from the corner of my eye.
“I wish she was here for this too, dad,” Vic said, resting his chin on his fist, looking at his reflection. “I miss her so much. Today is going to be rough.”
“I miss her, too, but we have to get through it. Anyway, the party tonight will be fun, even if the service is going to be LAME,” Ariel said, as he brushed his dirty blond hair in the mirror, mussing it a bit. At sixteen, my elder son Ari stood nearly 6’3”, having grown several inches this past summer. I sometimes worried that at the rate the boy was growing, he would soon dwarf even me. Vic was practically a foot shorter than I was, however, he was due for a growth spurt any year now.
Today was Vic’s Bar Mitzvah. We had started planning the event over a year ago, but swiftly dropped all planning after tragedy struck, and haphazardly resumed during the summer. I wanted my son to have a good memory of the religious coming of age ceremony, and the grief counselor said it was important to both maintain some semblance of normalcy and give the boys something to look forward to.
Seven months earlier, my wife of nearly 18 years, Deborah, died in a car accident on her way to work. Deborah, a calculus professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was caught in a storm on her drive to Cambridge from our home in Brookline, and her car swerved off the road, hitting a tree. The paramedics say that she died instantly. That’s what I wanted my sons to believe, anyway, as if the acute shock of her death would be mitigated slightly knowing that she suffered little. I had been in my office at Tufts University when I received the dreaded phone call.
Deborah and I had dated on and off for two years while we were both doctoral students at Columbia. We met through a mutual friend at Hillel, who set us up on a blind date purely because he thought our height differential was funny, with Deb standing at barely five feet tall, compared to my gargantuan frame. We hit it off immediately, and the chemistry was palpable, but our relationship was fiery. After a big fight, we’d break up for a few weeks, and then resume the relationship when the other was lonely. She was attractive, smart, funny, driven, and a good person, but I was young and couldn’t give my all to the relationship. Ultimately, we had broken up amicably, but for good, several months before I left for Italy in the summer of 1987. Deb announced that she had feelings for a colleague named David in the math department and wanted to make it work with him. I was fine with it, I wanted her to be happy, and we decided we’d remain friends.
Several weeks after I returned from my life-changing summer in Italy, I ran into Deb at a graduate student Shabbat dinner, both of us depressed and heartbroken. After getting drunk on the cheap Kosher wine, Deb and I left together, taking a walk around Riverside Park, chatting about our summers. Deb mentioned that David had broken up with her a month earlier, as he had cheated on her and had gotten his mistress pregnant. He was going to “do the right thing,” as it was, and go down to City Hall the next week and get married.
Inebriated and uninhibited from the gallon of Manischewitz I estimated that I downed at dinner, I told Deb the truth about my summer with Elio, and how I’d never felt quite that level of intimacy with anyone else before. The floodgates were opened and honesty poured out. I’d been with other men before, mostly one night stands in college and graduate school, and obviously had been with women, and I made sure to tell her that I had never cheated on her while we were together, which was true. The connection I experienced that summer was on another level, but Elio was just a teenager and I had to let him grow and become his own person. We wouldn’t be in the same place in our lives for a long time, and he needed to have his own life experiences. Not to mention that my parents would likely never speak to me again if they found out.
Deb said that she had always suspected I liked men, too, and that it never bothered her. It felt good to come clean to her - it was as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. We made our way back to my studio apartment on 112th and Broadway, where we clumsily slept together. The next morning, hungover and sober, we had a long conversation, and decided that they were both incredibly unhappy but we were never unhappy together, so we might as well be together if we can’t be with the ones we truly love.
Ours was more a partnership and a friendship than a romance, but it worked for Deb and me. The sex was serviceable, and we enjoyed each other’s company, and respected one another. By Thanksgiving, we decided that we would get married the following year. It all made total sense - our families wanted us to marry someone nice and Jewish (though I wasn’t the right kind of doctor her parents were hoping for), and we both wanted to have children. We married in the summer of 1988.
After we both graduated from Columbia, we moved to Brookline, Massachusetts, where we both received teaching offers at Boston-area universities. Our first child, Ari, was born in March 1990, and he was followed soon after by Vic in September 1993. Deb and I were happy enough, and I adored being a father more than anything else, but I never stopped thinking about Italy and what could have been.
“Vic, I can’t believe you’re making us wear these stupid ties. Sheet music pattern? Really?” Ari said in the car on the way to the synagogue.
“Be nice to your brother, it’s his Bar Mitzvah, and it’s what he wanted,” I said. “In any case, we all wore those garish Red Sox ties to your Bar Mitzvah, is this really any worse?” I noticed in the rearview mirror that Ari had stuck his tongue out at me.
“I like the ties,” Vic said from the passenger seat, “Mom helped me pick them out a few weeks before she died.” The boy knew how to end a conversation.
We arrived at the synagogue before the service was to begin so Vic could practice his Haftorah and speech one last time. Ari was uncharacteristically compliant and helpful, and stood at the entrance to the sanctuary, handing the customized yarmulkes covered in music notes and treble and bass clefs to the male guests so they could cover their heads, while I sat up front with Vic, helping calm his nerves. My son was usually collected before his instrumental performances, but he didn’t want to sing in front of the crowd. Life is hilariously cruel that way - during the most awkward year of your life, while your voice cracks and acne takes over your face, you have to participate in a religious ceremony that involves singing, and have hundreds of staged photographs taken of you. Last night, I showed Vic how chubby and awkward I was at my own Bar Mitzvah, and looking at the pictures seemed to have minimally assuaged some fears.
The service went as expected (it was boring and slow, as Ari predicted, but Vic did well reading/singing his Haftorah). Vic stood at the bimah and took index cards out of his coat pocket, ready to read his speech.
“Thank you everyone for coming to my Bar Mitzvah service today. In Judaism, they say you’ve become a man after your Bar Mitzvah, but if I’m being honest, I feel like both an old man and a young boy today. This past year has been rough on my family, and I think we’ve all aged decades in the seven months since my mother died. I miss her terribly, and I think that she would have loved nothing more than to be here today. Sometimes I feel like an old man who understands grief, but at other times, I’m just a little boy who just wants to hug his mom and can’t. I don’t mean to make this a sad speech, but it’s important for me to acknowledge my family’s loss so we can try to celebrate what is otherwise a happy occasion today. Isn’t that what Judaism is about? Being resilient in times of overwhelming duress.”
He continued for a few index cards, speaking about his torah portion and how it relates to American Jewish life, as well as his own life.
“I want to thank Rabbi Zelnick for being patient with me and helping me learn my Haftorah, and my Hebrew School teachers for teaching me about my culture and how to read Hebrew. I even want to thank my brother, Ari. While he’s sometimes annoying and loves to pick on me, I don’t think I could have gotten through this past year without him. Last, I want to thank my dad, for having this party for me in the first place when none of us could really think about planning it, and also for helping me with my homework, for pushing me to continue with my piano lessons when I was too sad to get out of bed, and for being the rock that our family needed, even when I’m sure he just wanted to crawl into bed, too.
“In Hebrew School, we learned about this Jewish idea called tikkun olam, which literally means repair the world. My teachers have said that the religion suggests we should live our lives in a way that always gives back to the planet, to always do mitzvot and give tzedakah. Though some interpret tikkun olam as literally repairing the planet, we now see it more as the need and desire to do societal good to selflessly make the world a better place. With that in mind, while my dad says I have to put half of my Bar Mitzvah money into my college fund, I plan on donating the other half to an organization that provides new musical instruments to low income public schools and children in need. Music has always been my happy place, where I can go to when I’m feeling down, and it’s the best way that I can think of to give back so that others who are less fortunate have the same opportunities I have. Maybe this will help repair the world a little. Thank you.”
I quickly went up to the bimah with Ari, tears in my eyes, and swept up both of my sons into the tightest hug I could muster. Vic had told me that he didn’t want me to see his speech ahead of time, so I had no idea about the donation, but I was so proud of him (if this had been Ari, I would have insisted on seeing the speech, because who knows what stunt he would have pulled). When did my thirteen year old son get so mature? I had to regain my composure quickly, because Rabbi Zelnick signaled that it was my turn to give a speech.
After raising the microphone to my height, eliciting a chuckle from the congregation, and clearing the frog in my throat, I looked at Vic and began to speak from the heart, rather than using the speech I had already written. “Vic, I am so proud of you today. Allow me to turn into my bubbe for a minute, and say that your mother would have been kvelling. She wanted nothing more than for you and your brother to grow up happy, healthy, loved and educated, and she would have been thrilled to see the man that you’ve become today.” I reached into my coat pocket and took out a small jewelry box. “Your mother bought this last year when she was in Jerusalem for a conference, so she could give it to you today. This Star of David necklace, like the one we gave Ari for his Bar Mitzvah, and the one that I’ve worn most of my life, symbolizes the plight of our people. We were persecuted for generations so that we can live freely, practice religion as we want to, and be who we are with no fear. We may not be particularly observant - sorry, Rabbi - but it’s important that we remember where we came from and who we are. I hope you’ll wear this proudly.” I put the necklace on Vic, who was visibly holding back tears.
I looked out into the congregation, and continued. “Once again, thank you all for being here to honor the occasion of Vic’s Bar Mitzvah. It means so much that you are all here, celebrating with us.” I scanned the faces in the crowd, and that’s when I locked eyes with him. How did I miss those big green eyes that can bore a hole into your soul, and those curls that he was unsuccessfully trying to quash under the yarmulke?
Elio nodded at me as we made eye contact, and I lost my composure, forgetting everything I had planned on saying. “So… thanks for coming, enjoy the Kiddush, and we’ll see most of you tonight at the catering hall for the party.”
What was he doing here? I had kept up a regular correspondence with Professor Perlman for the past twenty years, but I’d spoken to Elio exactly twice in the past eleven years. He had surprised me in my lecture hall several years ago (it was four years ago. I know exactly when it was, how could I forget?), and had completely taken me by surprise. It was wonderful to see him then, almost like waking from a fifteen year coma, but I had decided that I’d never be able to see him again without feeling the same pain that I felt that last day in Italy. Back then, despite everything we were mutually feeling, I did not want to cheat on my wife with him. Seeing Elio, even briefly, brought back emotions I had buried deep, and I tried very hard to stifle them, but they were quickly arising today.
Samuel and Annella had responded yes to the Bar Mitzvah, and though I was surprised that they were flying in from Italy just for this occasion, after Deb’s death, nearly everyone we invited had said they were attending. However, they were the only Perlmans I had invited. Elio was now sitting in the back row of the sanctuary with his father. He had aged gracefully, looking even more handsome than the last time I had seen him, and had thankfully shaved that beard he’d had four years prior. I’d never seen him in a suit before, and it, well, suited him. I would need the rest of the afternoon before the party to recover from seeing him, and I’d need to avoid him until we left the synagogue. I knew myself and what I truly desired, and if I got too close to him… I didn’t even want to finish that thought. Why was he here?