My father gave a thin smile, his hand comically small in Eddie’s. “Yaakov Eden.”
“Thanks for coming, Yaakov,” Eddie said, before offering his hand to my mother.
An awful moment followed, my mother staring blankly, caught between the social necessity of extending her hand and our strict custom of refraining from touching non-family members of the opposite gender. I winced, but Eddie realized his mistake quickly and holstered his handshake. “Shit, my apologies!” he barked. “I didn’t realize, excuse my idiocy . . .”
“No, no,” my mother soothed, red-cheeked with embarrassment. “Please, not to worry.” My father assumed the face one might adopt when passing a kidney stone, but Eddie and my mother both gave awkward smiles. “I’m Leah.”
This would have been considerably more painful, perhaps unsalvageable, with someone else. Yet Eddie released a sonic laugh, diffusing any tension. “Don’t mind me, I’m just a shmuck. Most people here aren’t terribly strict about, er, what do you call it? Shomer negiah, right, that kind of thing. Between us, maybe they ought to be, I’ll show you one couple in particular over there, plenty of rumors, though who am I to judge? So, yeah, that whole no-touching thing isn’t really on my radar. But Cynthia’ll kill me when she hears.” After his laughter, Eddie rested his eyes on me. “And your name, sport?” He had quite the handshake.
“Aryeh.”
“No kidding. That was my old man’s name.”
“Oh yeah?”
“A bona fide tzadik.” He paused, sending thoughts heavenward. “I think you would’ve liked him,” he mumbled to my father.
My father nodded courteously, unconvinced.
He turned back to me. “And how old are you, bud?”
“Seventeen.”
“Seventeen? So you’re a junior or senior?”
“Senior.”
“Nice. And you’ll be at the yeshiva in Sunny Isles, I assume? They’re pretty serious folks, let me tell you. I hear they hold mishmar three times a week.”
“I’ll be at Kol Neshama, actually.”
“That other place was much too far of a drive,” my mother said. “Plus, we’re told Kol Neshama is, well, a superior education.”
“Wow, you’re going to the old Voice of the Soul Academy? Who would’ve thought?” He grinned boyishly. “You’ve really got to meet my son, you’re in the same class.” He turned animatedly to my parents. “How great is this?”
They returned his grin politely.
“Noah Harris!” he hollered toward the pool. “Where the heck are you, kid?”
From the water emerged a tall boy with green eyes, long blond locks, an exact replica of his father’s smile and an almost excessive collection of shoulder and abdominal muscles. It was obvious he was an athlete. “Nice to meet you all,” he said, slinging a towel over his shoulders. “I’d shake your hands but I’m sopping.”
“Easy on the shaking,” Eddie said, winking at my mother. “Noah, Ari here will be in your grade at the Academy.”
“No kidding.”
“Yaakov, Leah, what do you say we fix you both stiff drinks, yes? These two don’t need us breathing down their necks.” Eddie slapped my back playfully. “Yaak, you like cigars? No? Well, you do kind of look like a man I could turn into a lover of single malt. I’ve got the perfect thing for you to try. Noah, grab Ari a beer, will you, or a hot dog if he wants? Don’t worry, everything’s kosher.” With that, his large hands took hold of my father, while carefully avoiding contact with my mother, and steered them away.
Noah watched them leave. His arms appeared to flex involuntarily, despite the fact that they hung at ease at his sides. I wondered what it would be like to have such a problem. “Say your name was Ari?”
“Aryeh,” I said. Then, kicking myself: “Ari for short.”
“And you moved from—?”
“Brooklyn.”
“Dope. I have friends on Long Island. Know anybody there?”
“Some,” I said noncommittally, certain we’d have zero mutual friends.
“I went to camp with Benji Wertheimer. Know him?” he asked, hopeful for conversation. “No? Fantastic point guard.”
I shook my head.
“What about Efrem Stern? Okay, Naomi Spitz? Shira Haar? She’s from Kings Point. Everyone knows her, throws Hamptons parties, she’s super pretty?” He laughed. “Don’t tell my girlfriend I said that,” he said confidentially, pointing back toward the pool.
“No, I, uh—I won’t.”
“Where’d you go to school?”
“Torah Temimah.”
“Torah Temimah?”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling small.
“Never heard of it. New school?”
“No. Not really.”
“One of those frum places, then. The shtetl. We talking black hats?”
Just how out of place I was dawned on me. To Noah, whose life, I suspected, involved athletic glory, beach houses, summer parties, I was some staid rabbinical student who had wandered comically into the wrong world, or at least the wrong backyard. And I was not unaccustomed to living as a stranger. I was a stranger in my previous existence, but one who understood that the rules governing each detail of life—how to marry, how to think, how to tie my shoes—were prescribed, always, by an aspirational morality. Standing before Noah, I was a different breed of stranger, someone attempting to hide in plain sight without any understanding of the overarching rules. Camouflaging here, I realized then, would be harder even than in Brooklyn. “Yes,” I said, itching to leave. “Pretty much.”
He laughed. “You’ll find it a bit different here, I think. We tend to have a bigger appetite than Torah . . . what’d you say it was?”
“Temimah.”
“Right. That. All boys, wasn’t it?”
I grimaced at how quickly he sized me up. “Unfortunately,” I said, attempting to salvage some semblance of self-respect.
“I don’t know how I’d survive in a school like that. Go stir-crazy, probably.” He rubbed his bicep. “Come, let me introduce you.”
Nervously, I followed him to the edge of the marble-tiled pool. Two girls swam over. “Ladies,” Noah said, “meet Ari Eden. Ari, this is my girlfriend Rebecca Nadler, and this is not my girlfriend, Sophia Winter.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
“Hello,” Rebecca said, swimming toward me to offer her hand. When Noah shot her a warning look, she retreated, improvising with a warm wave. She was tall and athletic looking, with brown, curly hair, big teeth and wide features. My eyes, however, were fixed firmly on Sophia, treading silently by the edge: dark hair, milk-white skin, a sharp, slightly angular nose, wiry arms, cerulean eyes.
Noah slapped my back: I’d been staring too long.
“Where’d you move from?” Rebecca was looking at me curiously.
“Brooklyn.”
“New York—everything’s beautiful there, isn’t it?”
My life in New York, I wanted to admit, was anything but beautiful. Instead, I did the socially acceptable thing and nodded.