“So it’s the three of them? And the grandfather is . . . Amir’s mom’s ex-father-in-law?”
“Yeah, but do yourself a favor and don’t bring this up to Amir. He doesn’t really talk about his father.”
We fell back into silence. Soon enough, drowsy from the heat, we nodded off.
When I opened my eyes again I found two faces over me: one sun-soaked with bleached-gold hair, the other uniquely pale. In that warm, oozing realm between waking and sleeping I watched these faces—hazy, provocative—with a dreamy smile. Then, in a cruel moment, the fog burst.
“Hamlet?”
“Sophia,” I said too quickly, jolting upright, immensely relieved I’d kept my shirt on. “How are you?”
The blond stood silently, eyes drifting between her cellphone and me.
“Sorry to wake you,” Sophia said dryly.
“Just resting my eyes.” I leaned forward, stiff from sand. Sophia was wearing a short, black sundress. Her friend, tall and slender with a rather absurdly toned stomach, wore a crocheted white bikini. Sophia strained her neck toward the sky, now smudged with clouds. The sun had slipped away.
“This is Remi, by the way,” Sophia told me. “Remi, this is—Aharon?”
“Ari,” I said, humiliated she’d forgotten my name. “Ari Eden.”
“—Ari. He’s just moved to town and he likes his Shakespeare.”
Remi paused. “He likes his beer?”
“What? No,” I said. “Shakespeare.”
Smirking in acknowledgment, Remi returned to her phone.
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
She gestured at Oliver, who snored loudly. “Smoked himself unconscious?”
“He, well—”
“I’m aware of his bullshit. It’s why I dumped him.” Remi lowered her phone. “Can’t expect much else from the boy. It’s what he is, after all. A boy.”
Noah, Rebecca and Amir stumbled from the ocean. On cue, a loud crack overhead.
“Let’s bounce,” Amir said, gathering towels.
“Must we wake him?” Remi asked. Oliver’s chest moved softly up and down.
“I’m totally cool with leaving him,” Amir said. “It’s only rain.” An electric bolt to the west. “Fine. And minor lightning.”
Noah shook him awake. Oliver rubbed his eyes groggily. “Remi?” he said, that wispy smile returning. “Always pleasant waking to your face. How was your summer, doll?”
“Divine,” she said. “Yours?”
He got to his feet, pulling on a vintage Alonzo Mourning Heat jersey. “Little this, little that.”
“I see.”
“London, was it?”
“Paris,” Remi said, already reabsorbed in her texting. I decided not to share the fact that I’d been outside the country but once—for the funeral of my father’s father in Jerusalem.
Oliver got to his feet, rolled his towel. “Parisian admirers?”
“A parade.”
Oliver stretched his limbs. “Sounds about right.”
More thunder, followed by chill, summer drizzle. We hurried to the lot, the girls ahead, Oliver limping behind. Sophia and Remi threw themselves into a red Porsche while we loaded into Noah’s Audi. I nearly laughed at the absurdity of this scene: two sports cars, each likely worth more than my house; a cast of wealthy strangers; me, tzitzit thrown over my T-shirt, lagging behind, fleeing from a beach, a real beach.
“What’d you think of ol’ Rem?” Oliver asked when we were settled in the car.
“Well,” I started, aware she was his ex-girlfriend.
“Go ahead, say it,” he said, nestling back into sleep against the window, “she’s a goddess.”
Amir laughed. “You screwed up, Oliver. You know that?”
Oliver closed his eyes. “Eh.”
“Her father’s rolling in it,” Amir told me. “Made a fortune in biotech and now cryptocurrency. He’s on CNBC all the time.”
“Crypto, dot-com mania, Dutch tulips. It’s all speculative, if you ask me. Bubbles waiting to burst,” Oliver mumbled, half-asleep. “Nouveau riche shit. That’s not real money.” The Porsche zoomed in front of us, soaring into the falling rain. Noah revved his engine, lurching after it, snaking through traffic.
I rode with my cheeks against the window, staring out at the Florida sun shower, replaying the sight of those hyper-realistic faces against the sky.
* * *
THAT FIRST SHABBAT WAS QUIET. Over dinner we discussed the Parsha: “Shoftim opens by instructing us how to appoint the right king,” my father said, eyes closed, swaying slightly, using that singsong voice reserved for Torah study, “but why do we ask for a king in the first place?”
“To be like our neighbors,” my mother said, distributing gefilte fish. “To blend in with everyone else.”
My father brandished his pointer finger. “A great sin, forgetting who we are.”
After dinner, my father and I learned while my mother read on the couch, eyeing us with contentment. We woke at seven the next morning for minyan, being that my father insisted on praying early, while his mind was half-dreamy, while most other shul-goers were still asleep, and then we returned home for another silent meal. Following bentching we sang briefly—I hated Shabbat singing but hummed intermittently, out of some vague sense of duty—until my parents retreated drowsily to their bedroom for a nap, leaving me to read on the living room couch.
As a child, I suffered through a recurring dream. I stood at the mouth of a cave, rolling a boulder back and forth. Something about the sound of that boulder scraping the ground triggered a neuropathic inflammatory response: fever, cold sweats, nausea. I despised these dreams, feared their production of what I imagined to be some combination of physical and psychosomatic cytokines—small, confused proteins tasked with destroying an infection that neither my body nor mind knew to be quite real. But the most intolerable symptom was the sensation of being frozen in time. My movements blurred, my thoughts unspooled too slowly, all sounds adopted a sunken pitch. Even the mere recollection of these dreams, while sitting in Gemara shuir or riding my bike, was enough to dredge up that feeling of being paralyzed in time, leaving me pale and clammy.
The dreams, probably the result of prepubescent migraines, stopped in my early teens. And yet, throughout my adolescence, I often felt time resume that insufferable creep. My mother never fully understood what I meant: from her perspective, my progression from infant to brooding young adult had occurred too quickly, leaving her unprepared for her only child’s departure from her house. Shabbat was thus our shared antidote. For my mother, Shabbat suspended time, providing a moment to breathe, to reflect. For me, Shabbat restored equilibrium. We went to shul, we ate together, we sang and, for twenty-five structured hours, time resumed a more bearable pace. I grew up finding beauty in Shabbat for precisely the opposite reason that Eric Fromm and most Jews loved Shabbat: once a week, I had the chance not to overthrow time, but to slip happily back into its shackles.
After havdalah—my mother holding the candle above her head, my father dipping his fingertips into the wine, his pockets, behind his ears—I received the call. Oliver’s parents were in the Hamptons, which meant Oliver was throwing a party. Would I come? I agreed. Good, Noah said, they needed a designated driver. I was being used, but I was still flattered to have been invited. Besides, I reasoned, driving meant I wouldn’t have to fumble for an excuse to stay sober. It was foolproof.