I felt “watched” whenever the moonlight streamed into my bedroom window at night, paranoid that God used the moon as his lookout – probing me from there with his powerful flashlight. I didn’t want “him” to see what I daydreamed about in my bedroom. Not that it was anything bad or abnormal for a 12 year old, but I didn’t want my parents finding out and meddling in my private stuff.
It was July 1969, less than a year before my bar mitzvah and my last summer to be just a boy, when two men walked on the moon – God’s lookout – for the first time. I watched the entire drama unfold on TV while constructing a mock space suit with various scraps lying around the house. I joined the astronauts by conducting my own moonwalks on the barren patch of dirt in my backyard, collecting what I imagined to look like moon rocks. I washed them and then displayed them in my mom’s glass breakfront, next to her collection of glass menageries.
At night, I reclined on mom’s patio lounge chair, closely watching the moon for any sign of Apollo 11 and crew, and imagining them playfully crawling around the surface, like infants exploring the textures and contours of their new caretaker – maybe a lunar Goddess or God himself. At the same time, I monitored Walter Cronkite’s minute by minute reporting of the walks, feeling relieved that the astronauts were finding nothing, except for dust, rocks, craters, and treeless mountain ranges. There were no lunar aliens or a flashlight wielding God to be found anywhere on the moon. I could finally rest easy about the big sunlit rock in the sky, knowing that I was not being observed from it – and now feeling free to let my daydreams run wild, without fear of reprisal.
Mrs. Rizzo and the hug
My best friend Jack lived in the house behind our backyard and fence. His mom, Mrs. Rizzo, made some of the best sweets ever during the week of the moonwalks, including thick, gooey chocolate chip brownies, coconut cream filled cupcakes, apple pies, and chocolate covered eclairs. Some of it was sold at a special event at her church, which donated the proceeds to a local shelter. The remainder was enjoyed by her family – and by me when the opportunity arose, which was every day that week.
It seemed like I was always near her kitchen when something came out of the oven, not intentionally of course, but I just happened to be there with Jack; and so Mrs. Rizzo gave me samplings of the warm treats, and hugs to go along with them. She was always humming or singing Christian melodies while baking and giving out her hugs, which imbued it all with even more sweetness. I looked forward to the hugs as much as the treats.
The hugs always came about the same way that week. I stood there chowing down one of her baked treats – moaning and groaning about how yummy it tasted – when suddenly her arms wrapped around my waist from the back, squeezing me until I almost could not breathe. Sometimes the frosting would still be on her fingers while she held me. I was tempted to grab her hands and lick off her fingers, like a child scooping up and devouring the leftover frosting in a mixing bowl – but that was Jack’s entitlement, not mine.
I went home every evening with an image in my head of Mrs. Rizzo’s soft arms wrapped around my waist; her dainty fingers randomly streaked with wisps of sweet frosting. I became obsessed with those frosted hugs, thinking about them day and night. They were like no other hugs, not like my mother’s hugs, and not like the frivolous hugs my sisters gave me. They were hugs from a gentle Christian woman who sang in the church choir, baked gooey treats, and helped feed the needy during the moonwalks. Something about that combination worked through me and did something to my brain and body, but I can’t quite explain it. I felt very needy for more of her treats and hugs, especially before I stopped being a boy – but I wrecked things somehow, did something wrong.
It was the first and only time I had asked Mrs. Rizzo or anyone for a hug. It was a Sunday, and the church fundraiser and baking had ended the day before. The incident began after they returned from church, when I noticed Mrs. Rizzo playfully squeezing and tickling Jack in their backyard. I climbed through the fence into their yard, as I often did, to watch Jack have a fit of giggles in his Sunday clothes while she smothered him in hugs and kisses and tickles. I stood there with a grin from ear to ear, enjoying the spectacle of my best friend Jack looking so wildly happy. I wanted some of that too, so I asked Mrs. Rizzo, “May I have some of that too Mrs. Rizzo?”
She let go of Jack and asked, “Do you want a tickle or a hug, Isaac? You can have only one of those today.”
She smiled at me with questioning eyes, but before I could respond she gestured with her finger for me to come to her.
She wrapped her arms around me tightly, from the front this time, keeping my arms locked in place against my sides. But with some effort, I managed to free my arms and wrap them around her waist, so I would not feel like a bandaged mummy. I relaxed my face and body against her, feeling her warmth and sniffing the smell of sweetness on her, maybe the residue of the previous day’s baking. And momentarily, I silently moaned and groaned to myself, as if I were biting into one of her baked treats. Abruptly though, she released her hug, pulled my hands away from her waist and hips like she was peeling off old, sticky duct tape, and gently pushed me aside with a look of disgust on her face. She said, “You better go home Isaac and clean up for your lunch. Your mom will be looking for you. We won’t tell her about today.”
Jack looked as dumbfounded as me, and asked his mom, “Won’t tell her what mom?” She told Jack to stop being a busybody and to go inside to finish his chores. He did not respond quickly enough for her liking though, and she grabbed his hand, pulling him like a dog on a leash into their covered porch. The door slammed shut behind them, and her voice quickly faded while calling out to her husband with a tone of urgency, as if a rabid animal were ravaging through their vegetable garden and he needed to load the shotgun.
I hurried back through the fence, cutting my arm on something while sobbing, and feeling like I had just committed a horrible deed, without knowing the details. I feared Mrs. Rizzo telling my parents what I had done…but what had I done? I hugged my own mom kind of like that, sisters too once in a while, but this was somehow different. It felt different. It felt good, like no other hug before that. And I liked it a lot for the second or millisecond that it lasted, but something was wrong with it – for Mrs. Rizzo.
I was restless that night, ruminating over the incident in my mind, obsessively and repeatedly looking for the smoking gun.
Maybe I enjoyed Mrs. Rizzo a little too much and accidentally revealed this in some way? Yeah, something gave me away, but what? Oh my God, coveting one’s neighbor is a sin in the Torah! Is that the same thing as wanting or asking for hugs from your friend’s mother? Or maybe Jewish boys were not supposed to hug Christian neighbors so closely?
My family and synagogue community had many ideas about things like this, about proper relations between Jewish and Christian neighbors, but I never paid much attention to this talk, because it all sounded so silly to me, but now I was being confronted with it.
I thought about these things all night and poured through my Hebrew school copy of the holy texts, looking at each commandment – 613 of them. I couldn’t find anything about a friend’s mother. Maybe it is a Christian thing and not a Jewish thing? I pondered the possibility, but didn’t own a Christian bible and had nobody Christian to ask, except for one of the Rizzos, and I could not ask any of them.
Finally, at about 5:00 am, I gave up on my quest for understanding. I was like the protagonists in Kafka’s stories about ambiguous guilt. I had no idea what I’d done wrong, but I was being charged with a crime anyway. I felt racked with fear and guilt.
For the remainder of the summer, I was terrified at the thought of my parents having any contact with the Rizzos – and thus creating opportunities for my sins, whatever they were, to be revealed in all of their ugly depth. I stayed away from Jack and the fence separating our properties, not wanting to provoke Mrs. or Mr. Rizzo into taking action of any kind. In fact, I stopped any further lunar expeditions in the backyard as well, as I wanted to become a distant memory for the Rizzos.
Jack called out to me a few times over the fence during the first two weeks of my self-imposed exile, and one time he rang my doorbell, but I kept out of sight and gave my parents one excuse after another for my bizarre behavior. I felt like the biggest jerk for ignoring my friend, and still feel rotten about it to this day, but my actions were for the cause of self-preservation – that is what I believed at the time. I made the choice to sacrifice my friend and my precious moonwalks, so that I could maintain the respect and sanctuary of my family. My “apparently” sinful hug had to be hidden at all costs.
Woodstock and Yom Kippur
Sometime in late August, my sister Anne came home from Woodstock, with stories about Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, being saved by Jesus, and all the love she shared with her new friends – she avoided “some” of the details. She was obviously changed by the experience and wore a peace sign and Christian cross to prove it. Anne left for Woodstock being an angry 18 year old and the sister from hell, but came home singing and dancing and talking about Jesus Christ. Whatever had happened to her seemed almost miraculous to me, and I began wondering why we were Jewish and not following Jesus Christ.
This Jewish stuff had many rigid rules and rules about the rules, and thousands of commentaries that argued over all that – all of which were “supposedly” punishable by God if you did not follow or interpret something correctly. However, being loyal to our Jewishness was of utmost importance to the Jewish community and my family, even if we didn’t understand one word of Hebrew or broke all the rules that Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai. We were expected to be good Jews – subject to personal interpretation of course – while serving a lifetime sentence of perpetual guilt over what we screwed up, what we think we screwed up, or what we probably screwed up but could not verify, because it would take a lifetime to read and interpret all the rules and commentaries. That was how I saw the situation at the time.
Anyway, my parents were horrified at the changes in Anne’s personality and religious ideas. Dad constantly and angrily interrogated her for the names of her brainwashers. She was like a heroic prisoner of war though, revealing nothing. I was secretly proud of her for holding out, and enjoyed hearing about all the love that Jesus had for us. Yet, her situation, and my parent’s reaction to it, further inflamed my sick, “pit in the stomach” guilt feeling for having done something wrong with Mrs. Rizzo, and my ruminations went out of control.
What will happen to me now? Will I be banned from joining the Christians and getting all that Jesus love like Anne? Will I incur the wrath of God for not being a faithful Jew? Will I go to hell? Is there a Jewish hell? What about Mrs. Rizzo and those hugs? Will I never be hugged like that again by someone, and if I am, will my parents throw me out of the house because of their 3 strikes and you’re out rule?
When Yom Kippur came around in September, I made sure to starve myself all day in repentance for whatever sin(s) I committed with Mrs. Rizzo. At the end of this holy holiday, my mom made her best batch of brownies ever – ironically a borrowed recipe from Mrs. Rizzo. I was reluctant to eat them out of fear of choking on my own sins, but they tasted so good after starving all day, and they were made by my Jewish mom, so I considered myself safe for the time being.
Preparing for manhood
My angst over the Rizzo incident waned during the fall and winter months, as I anxiously prepared to become a 13 year old Jewish man at my bar mitzvah. Obsessively, I practiced reading and singing the various prayers and holy texts required for my ritualistic transition to manhood. I did not want to screw up anything and embarrass my family, since this was to be the social event of the decade for them.
My parents spent an enormous amount of money on the reception to follow my ceremony. It was to take place in an elegant function hall at the local Sheraton. Everything had to be perfect and was meticulously planned, including the design and timing of the invitations, the table settings, the meal and dessert, the dance music, the procession of important family members, the timing of the traditional prayers over the bread and wine, my synagogue and reception attire, and so on.
Our family dinner table talk that winter was dominated by the reception. My father conducted a nightly debriefing of my mother regarding the MIRG – his acronym for the “Manifest of Invitations, Responses, and Gifts.”
The MIRG was a massive list of 3 to 4 generations of family members, embellished with notes as to who responded to their invitations, who had not, and who was planning to attend. There was also space for gift types and dollar values, to be filled in later following the reception. As with other Jewish families, the MIRG was my parent’s tool for assessing and reassessing the worth and loyalty of family members, and how much to gift when we were invited to their weddings and bar mitzvahs. I did not care about such things though, as long as I fulfilled my end of the deal, which was to perfectly recite portions of the Torah and adequately perform the rituals. So, I quietly ate my dinner each night, with one ear towards the TV and the other passively listening for the occasional questions, such as:
“How are your bar mitzvah lessons coming along Isaac?”
“Are you ready for your bar mitzvah, Isaac?”
I gave minimally acceptable responses, such as:
“The lessons are going okay.”
“I need more practice but I’m almost ready.”
Truth be told, I hated my bar mitzvah lessons and didn’t understand what I was reading or singing about, and didn’t care enough to ask. I felt unworthy of the entire thing anyway, after coveting Jack’s Christian mom for her frosting covered hugs. But most of all, I regretted the impending loss of my childhood, which the bar mitzvah ritual was about to take away from me. I wasn’t ready for manhood!
What I really wanted was to follow the space missions, collect more moon rocks in my backyard, play with my model Apollo command module and lunar lander that I’d put together last summer, ride my bike like a test pilot, and daydream about those frosted hugs from Mrs. Rizzo. There was no time for any of that anymore though. Being a kid was being squeezed out of existence as I approached April 25, 1970, the expiration date of my childhood and official entrance into manhood – my bar mitzvah. I was in agony over this impending reality, but what could I do?
My family’s dignity and social standing in the Jewish community were on the line, especially after my summer orgy of hugs with Mrs. Rizzo and my sister Anne’s apparent conversion to Christianity. Not only that, but grandpa was from the old world of Jewish orthodoxy, and reading and understanding the Torah was serious business of the spiritual kind. Already hurt by Anne, he subtly kept tabs on the progress of my Torah learning or lack thereof, with his Torah directed questions. Shamefully, I did not provide the answers he was seeking, as evident by his troubled facial expressions; but he never reproached me, other than to say, “Keep studying Isaac, this is more important than digging for holes.” I still don’t know what that meant, but I felt bad for letting him down.
Grandpa’s passing
Grandpa passed away in March 1970, about a month before my bar mitzvah. It was a sudden death that occurred while he was vacationing in the Bahamas, but this information dissolved between my ears. I didn’t believe it to be true. I attended his funeral with my family because I had no choice, but the entire ritual didn’t make sense to me, since grandpa was spending time with us, at our house. He was staying in Anne’s room while she was living away at college. I saw him every night after everyone went to bed. His room was next to mine, and he kept the tall lamp by the door turned on. I saw shadows of him on the hallway wall across from his room: surreal dark images of him moving back and forth with book in hand, whispering Hebrew prayers.
On some nights, he would softly call out to me, “Isaac, are you awake?” I would pretend to be sleeping, and there would be silence, until he asked again, “Isaac, are you awake? Let’s study some Torah Isaac.” I felt too ashamed to continue feigning sleep, and went into the room to study with him, eventually falling asleep and then waking to my mother guiding me back to bed.
I told only my mom about studying with grandpa – not wanting my father to know – but she told him after several incidents. My father temporarily locked Anne’s room so I could not access it. That stopped nothing though. They found me in other parts of the house, one time sleeping on the floor with my Hebrew texts strewn all about me. I told them that grandpa wanted me to locate something specific in the Talmud, but I could not remember what it was.
Throughout the next few weeks, I often heard my dad whispering in angry tones about me to my mom, but could not make out what was being said, other than my mom pleading with him for more time, and something about my grief over grandpa. I suspected that something was not quite right with me at that point. During my more lucid moments, I knew that grandpa had died, even while seeing his shadows and having conversations with him about the Torah. But I felt comforted that he was there, keeping me close to my Jewish heritage and preventing me from straying like my sister Anne.
At age 13 or close to it, I was not worried about death or the difference between being alive or dead, and my malfunctioning mind was obviously not recognizing such distinctions. I was not ready to say goodbye to grandpa, and he, or whatever he represented to me, was not ready to let go.
Apollo 13 disaster
It was close to 11:00 pm on a school night, about two weeks before my bar mitzvah. I was in bed, slightly awake, watching the shadows on the wall of grandpa pacing and praying, when abruptly he stopped doing both. The shadow of his face turned towards my room and then froze like a snapshot or framed portrait. “Grandpa, what is wrong?” I asked. My mouth was partially covered and muffled by my pillow, and so my muted question never left my room. Grandpa’s shadow image remained frozen on the wall.
My parents whispered again in the den, but it sounded different this time, as it was not about me. My father softly snapped at my mother, “Joan, turn up the TV!” The volume went way up and I heard the voice of a news man. He was talking about Apollo 13.
I exited my bedroom and crept down the dark hallway past Anne’s room, which was still locked, despite having seen the shadow of grandpa coming from there. Quietly I walked towards the kitchen, following the threads of light and the sound of clanking metal parts issuing from it. There were three men in space suits, one lying flat on his back on the kitchen floor, appearing to be unconscious or dead, and two others repairing something inside my mom’s dishwasher, using metal tools that had handles resembling the Christian cross. The inside of the dishwasher looked like a cramped version of the Apollo command module, with all the controls bunched together too tightly.
One of the astronauts said something like this: “Oxygen tank number 2 has exploded…it is too small in here to breathe…forget the moon…let’s get out of here before we suffocate!”
I ran into my mother’s arms while gasping for breath. She stood at the entrance of the kitchen watching the moon men. I wrapped my arms around her, desperately clinging to her for protection and pleading with her for life giving air. “Mom…Mom…I can’t breathe!”
Abruptly, she pulled my hands away from her waist like she was peeling off old, sticky duct tape, and gently pushed me aside with a look of disgust on her face. She asked me, “What did you do with Mrs. Rizzo last summer? What have you done!” She turned and walked into the darkened den, lit only by the shimmering lights of the television’s “Breaking News” in progress. I heard my dad hollering something about me in the darkness. I ran back to my bedroom out of breath, and later woke up huddled underneath the kitchen counter, my grandpa covering the top of my head with his hand, so I wouldn’t bump it while exiting. “Time to read some Torah Isaac,” he said, with a blank look on his face while forcefully pulling me out and up on my feet.
I felt scared by grandpa’s blankness and forcefulness, but don’t remember anything else, other than seeing Davey for the first time – my imaginary brother. He was cowering under the kitchen counter. Grandpa let him stay there or didn’t notice him. Davey was an exact copy of me, albeit much younger and seemingly not wanting to say much of anything. I immediately felt protective of him, like a big brother, but never questioned why he was there.
I was mostly awake for the remainder of that week – studying Torah with my late grandpa, following the progress of the “real” Apollo 13 crew trying to save their lives, obsessively daydreaming again about Mrs. Rizzo’s frosted covered hugs, and counting and recounting the days remaining of my childhood, which was now less than two weeks. Davey remained under the counter the entire week, playing with my model rockets. Just like my grandpa, he became an ongoing presence, at least for me. I checked on him every night before bed, offering him a few of my cookies and a cup of milk. He would just look at me though with his sad eyes, sometimes pushing away my hand and the cookies. I didn’t know what he wanted. It was not cookies.
The astronauts safely returned to earth at the end of the week, on a Friday, without ever making it to the moon. And the next morning, I finally returned to my backyard for the first time since the summer, but as a sleepwalker.
The sleepwalk
It was the beginning of my thirteenth birthday, one week before my bar mitzvah, when something went wrong with the moon in my mind. Dad woke me up at 2:30 AM in a panic. Out of breath, he tapped on my shoulder and said, “Isaac, wake up, hurry, put on some clothes and shoes, we need to go outside to the backyard.”
“Why Dad?” I asked inaudibly. My vocal chords were already closing shut and I felt blood rushing to my face.
I continued just lying there in my bed, half conscious and frozen with fear, while dad speed walked throughout the house, waking up everyone else: first my mother, then my three sisters, and finally my imaginary brother, Davey. Grandpa was already awake – as he had been since his passing a few weeks earlier – not wanting to move on until the conclusion of my bar mitzvah, which was now right around the corner.
The house was filled with the sound of panic: dad’s sticky feet racing over the carpet from room to room, and his out of breath commands for us to hurry; my imaginary brother weeping and being comforted by mom; and the confused, mumbling voices of my sisters – their drawers repeatedly opening and slamming shut with a frantic urgency, as they picked out the “right” outfits for whatever was awaiting us in the backyard.
The only sound of comfort was grandpa whistling and asking my mom where he could find the orange jam. Grandpa required his unsweetened black tea, buttered toast and orange jam before he would proceed with anything else. Nothing of the present could derail his routine. Tea, toast, and contemplation were always his first order of business before anything else. “The devil and his tricks can wait,” he would say.
“Isaac, are you getting dressed?” I heard my mom yell out in a muffled tone through the walls of the kitchen. I sat up, holding the bed sheet close to my body, the top edge of it across my mouth, my eyes closed. I did not respond to her. I could not project my voice with frozen vocal chords. Mom was too flustered to notice my lack of response. There was a nervous clattering of forks, knives and spoons being shifted around in the sink, and the sound of cupboard doors opening and slamming shut.
After some time, the noise in the kitchen came to an end, and the commotion of the family moved slowly and collectively into the distance, until there was almost no sound, except for the faint squeak of the sliding screen door between our den and backyard, opening and closing several times. I dropped the sheet from my face, opened my eyes, and got off my bed. I could not see more than a few feet in front of me. I waited for my eyes to dilate in response to the darkness, to receive whatever subtle threads of light were available. However, not only had someone turned off all the lights, but it appeared as if the space surrounding me had been painted black. There was a blackened darkness, not the diluted kind of darkness that is mixed with subtle hues of light. Nothing was reflecting light, not even the white walls or the digital clock in my bedroom.
I exited my bedroom and crept down the hallway, my right hand keeping in contact with the wall. “Grandpa…Grandpa…Grandpa,” I pleaded in short, energetic bursts without sound, until I made my way into what I thought was the kitchen, feeling the walls with both hands this time, and finally grabbing onto what felt like the dishwasher machine. I wrapped both arms around it to steady myself, and looked around. I could hear grandpa in the darkness, clearing his throat and sipping his tea, apparently not caring that the lights had been turned off, and not aware of my presence. “Grandpa are you there?” I thought I saw the outline of his back and head while he was sitting at the kitchen counter, but the kitchen was blacker than black, like the other rooms.
Down on my hands and knees I went, crawling my way through the kitchen towards the den, no longer feeling safe standing upright in such utter darkness. My hands scouted the kitchen’s cool floor tiles and then the carpet as I entered the dining room and den. I felt for familiar structures, such as the legs of tables and chairs, and the jutting out of the wall. My eyes were fixed on the floor, too scared to look up.
Much to my relief, faint rays of moonlight began streaming across the carpet through the screen door in the den, setting a path to the backyard. Getting back up on my feet, I walked the moonlit path to the screen door. Like a voyeur, I peeked through the screen at my sisters, brother, and mother huddled around my father, as he adjusted his binoculars and looked at the moon. Slowly I slid the door open, trying to mute its squeak, so it sounded more like a distant bicycle with training wheels that needed oil. I squeezed my skinny body through the opening and crept my way towards the east end of the backyard, eventually positioning myself under the canopy of a big old tree, hoping that the dark shadow of foliage would help me avoid detection. I stood there as stiff as the tree trunk, eyes fixed and turning my head like an owl, stealthily scanning the unfolding scene taking place at the opposite end of the yard.
My sisters were staring at the moon with expressions of disbelief and injustice, as if they just witnessed a horrible accident or crime, with its bloodied and dismembered victims strewn all over. Davey, my imaginary brother, was hanging on dad’s leg, his face buried in it. Mom was nervously fidgeting with a tissue in her hand, looking at my father for direction, never taking her eyes off of him, not even to look at the moon, which appeared to have plumes of sooty, grayish smoke rising from its surface: an eruption or explosion of some kind.
“Damn it, we should not be messing with other planets!” my father hollered into the sky with a vibrato of terror in his voice. “I guess that shooting up Vietnam with our rockets is not enough! Now we are crashing things into our moon! We cracked the thing open!” My mother snapped back nervously, “Lower your voice Ed, the entire neighborhood will hear you!” She reached out and caressed his face with both hands, tissue still in hand. He squirmed out of her hands with an annoyed look on his face and went back to viewing the moon.
Our neighbor, Mr. Rizzo – Mrs. Rizzo’s husband – studied the moon through his handheld telescope, and then peered over the fence into our backyard, observing my father’s panic attack.
Mr. Rizzo was a scientist of some kind, and he was always the voice of reason regarding situations such as bizarre astronomical events. He playfully yelled over to my dad, “What do you think Ed, what is happening to our moon?” And then he chuckled with his deep, booming voice. My father walked over to him, now with a pretense of having calmed down, and they began discussing the moon.
Mr. Rizzo gestured with his hands to explain something about typical lunar activity, and I heard the words optical illusion and possible volcanic activity come out of his mouth several times. He always wore white t-shirts, and this night his shirt caught the light of the moon and glowed. His angelic like reflection and scientifically precise terminology temporarily settled my insides. I could not make out all that he was explaining to my dad, but I sensed through his confident demeanor and the look of relief on my dad’s face, that the moon was not being bombed or in the process of self-destructing.
My sisters overheard Mr. Rizzo’s chuckles as well, and after seeing the look of distress vanish from father’s face, they began singing and dancing to their rendition of “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” led by my sister Anne of course, the songstress and free spirit of my family. And now feeling emboldened by the good news, my mother gave the moon a stern looking over, as if she were about to ground it for a month, and then she walked over to the fence to join the neighborly conversation.
The entire Rizzo family had emptied out of the house to join the social festivities at the fence. Mrs. Rizzo and my mom discussed their gardens and the gypsy moth problem; the two Rizzo girls stood at each side of their mom, following the conversation and singing hushed versions of Christian melodies; and Jack Rizzo, my now former pal, played with his dad’s telescope, discreetly trying to get a closeup view of my sister Anne’s chest. I secretly laughed under my breath.
Davey finally let go of dad’s leg, and climbed through a hole in the fence into the Rizzo yard and into Mrs. Rizzo’s warm embrace. She wrapped her soft, billowy arms around my brother’s little head, which he kept snugly tucked within the warmth of her bosom. I craved a comfort hug like that too and closed my eyes to imagine it: her arms cocooning my head and ears, so I would hear nothing dissonant or angry; my face pressed against her chest, with just enough space to breathe and inhale her maternal fragrance; and my vision dominated by the sight of her friendly freckles, matronly cleavage, and hanging religious cross.
The daydream abruptly ended though, when I reopened my eyes and saw the drastic transformation before me. The Rizzo family had merged together into a large Christian cross, planted firmly in the ground of their yard, just beyond the fence where they had been standing and interacting with my family.
I rubbed both eyes and did a double take, wondering if my eyes were deceived by another one of Mr. Rizzo’s optic illusions. But there it was, a large metallic cross standing tall in the Rizzo yard, but no Rizzo family. They had become a cross while I daydreamed of being cuddled by Mrs. Rizzo. And my parents and sisters, now bathed in the moonlight reflecting off the cross, were reaching over the fence with outstretched arms, like homeless people begging for some spare change or a piece of bread to sustain their lives. In vocal harmony, led by Anne of course, they pleaded to be saved by Jesus, saved from whatever was wrong with the moon. “Save us Jesus…Save us Jesus…Save us Jesus,” they repeated over and over. They were like frightened children, seeking God’s mercy or forgiveness to avoid his wrath for whatever imagined or real sins they had committed.
Yet, God’s anger seemed to escalate, as the moon was now spewing several long, dark plumes of smoke, sometimes with abrupt explosions that shook the sky and ground beneath my feet. I heard tiny pieces of “something” raining down from the moon on to the trees, fence, roofs of both houses, and pavement. It was a terrible sound, like the dead, remnant guts of something that was once living, but now falling out like dried out sand or grit.
Davey was back on our side of the fence with my family, standing at a slight distance from them. With a dumbfounded look, he watched his Jewish parents and sisters attempt to give themselves to Jesus, and then he looked over at me, and then set his vision back on the cross. He cried out to the now brilliantly lit cross, “Mrs. Rizzo, where are you…please come back Mrs. Rizzo!” His cry was a painfully sad, heart wrenching kind of sobbing, like a cold, hungry infant abandoned by his mother. It was the first time I heard him speak in a week. He wanted to return to the warm, maternally nurturing embrace of Mrs. Rizzo, but she and the other Rizzos now presented themselves in unity as a Christian cross.
Grandpa finally emerged from the house during all this weirdness, dressed in traditional Jewish attire and cradling a Torah scroll in his arms. He walked over to where I was standing and attached the Torah to the tree that was sheltering me. I gazed at the Torah, which was obviously very old – its parchment having a dried out, burnt appearance to it.
Grandpa was staring at me, as if waiting for my questions.
“Where did this Torah come from, Grandpa?”
“It was rescued, Isaac. It is a rescue Torah. It needs to be rescued again.”
“Rescued from what?”
“From being forgotten.”
I looked away from my grandfather, fearing that he was about to ask something of me, something that I was not prepared for. I looked across the yard to where the cross had been standing, but it was now gone and so were the Rizzos and my family. The moon was no longer erupting.
“Where is everyone grandpa?” I asked.
When I turned to look at him again, he was gone. The Torah scroll he had been carrying was still there, attached to the tree. I wrapped my arms around the Torah with the intention of carrying it back into the dark house. I could not lift it or pull it loose though, as several roots of the tree were now tightly wrapped around it, pulling it against the trunk and downward towards the ground. I kept my arms wrapped around it though, pulling at it, until I realized that it had vanished as well, just like the Christian cross, the Rizzos, my family and grandpa. There was no longer any sign of a Torah having been there. I was left with my arms wrapped around the tree trunk and sank to my knees and fell asleep.
I woke up when the screen door to the backyard began squeaking open again, but with an ear splitting pitch this time. It sounded like someone with metal fingernails slowly clawing a blackboard inside my right ear. The ear pain was tremendous, causing my teeth to ache. I felt myself grimacing in pain, but didn’t want to let go of the tree, so I turned my head to the left and pushed my right ear against the tree, attempting to muffle the sound. The door finally slammed shut and the painful sound stopped, leaving a dull ringing in my right ear, the beginning of a lifetime of tinnitus.
I felt a hand pull back my head slightly and slide between the tree and the right side of my face. It was my mom trying to protect my young face from the dirty, rugged bark of the tree.
“Oh my lord, Isaac, what are you doing out here?” my mother asked in a subdued whisper, as if she were trying to keep it a secret between us.
“I’m saving the Torah, mom.”
“Here is your coat Isaac, put it on before you catch pneumonia and before your father wakes up. And please sweetheart, keep your face and ear away from this dirty, moth eaten tree.”
I didn’t budge. I kept holding the tree with my mother’s hand between it and my face. I felt comforted by the solidity of the tree and the softness of my mother’s hand protecting me from its hardness, but this was short lived. In the distance, I could hear the screen door screeching open again and slamming shut, followed by father’s typical fast paced, nervous footsteps – this time dampened by the muddy grass.
“Get up Isaac!” my father bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Let go of the dirty tree and get out of the mud…NOW!”
He demanded that my mother pull me away from the tree and cover me with the coat. I held on to the tree tightly though and would not let go for some time. I gripped the tree with all my strength while my mother tried to pry my hands loose, until finally I let go from exhaustion and mumbled, “Grandpa wanted me to rescue the Torah…it was sucked back into the tree. I couldn’t save it.” My mother embraced me with both arms while I sobbed and trembled.
My father condescendingly nodded his head from side to side at my mom. “Stop delaying this Joan, stop coddling him, you need to call the doctor in the morning, this has gone on too long, he is getting worse.”
“Ed, he sleepwalks once in a while, we just need to watch him more carefully at night.” She let go of me and clutched her tissue again, looking at my dad for his response.
“Call the doctor Joan!. He is standing in front of the congregation in a week as a bar mitzvah boy. If he needs medication, then so be it!” He pointed at me without looking at me, as if I were an embarrassing patch of brown grass that he could not stand to associate himself with anymore. “He will mortify us! Joan…call the doctor!”
The Rizzo ranch, as my father called it, came alive again with several slams of their porch door. When I turned to look, the entire Rizzo clan had emptied out of the house again to observe what was going on in our yard. Mr. and Mrs. Rizzo, the girls, and Jack peered over the fence, looking over at me and my parents, just like drivers slowing down to observe the carnage of a car crash. Mrs. Rizzo clutched the cross on her neck with one hand, covering her mouth with the other. I don’t know what upset her more, my odd behavior, her memory of last summer, my dad’s booming angry voice, or some combination of all this.
I spotted little Davey in the shadows, cowering at the fence and looking at Mrs. Rizzo through a broken slat. He managed to poke his hand through and gently tug at her pants. I don’t know if she felt his light touch, but she released her cross and called to my mom while holding up a business card. “Joan, I have a name for you…a very good Jewish therapist. He works with children Isaac’s age.”
Therapy
Dr. Bergman was a short, pudgy bald guy with thick, black rimmed glasses hanging on a long, crooked hook for a nose: I think it is medically referred to as a deviated septum, but in this case so deviated that it looked visibly bent to the left. I remember thinking that he looked like Pinocchio. I heard Davey in the room giggling about his nose, making it difficult for me to keep a straight face.
“Issac, my boy, you need to make this crazy behavior go away or people will think you are meshugeh,” said the doctor.
I didn’t quite know what he meant by “meshugeh.” I’d heard my grandmother use the word meshugeh, along with all the other Yiddish words she mumbled under her breath while rolling her eyes at me, and so I knew it meant that something was not right about me, but I didn’t know the precise meaning.
“Do you know what happens when people think you are meshugeh, Isaac?”
His Mr. Roger’s style of interrogation annoyed me. I squirmed around in my chair for a minute or two and then replied, “Yes, they roll their eyes at me and speak in tongues from the old country.” I paused for a moment, feeling unsure of myself, and then mumbled, “Just like those old men with the long beards at the synagogue.”
“Like what, Isaac?” The doctor lowered his bifocals to the very bottom of his nose, with a slight smirk on his face. Davey giggled. I think he was hiding under Dr. Bergman’s desk. The little guy followed me everywhere.
“Like those old men with the long beards,” I repeated in an even softer, more garbled voice. I could feel a deep, red flush spreading up my neck into my face.
“Ahhh Isaac, maybe you are not meshugeh after all, but rather we have a comedian among us, and you are driving us meshugeh!” The doctor gave a hard, throaty laugh that went on for a minute, before it transformed into a scary sounding choking fit that drained all the color from his face. I thought he was about to drop dead, but he made a gesture with his hand that he was ok and for me to relax while he quelled his choking.
He continued: “When people think you are meshugeh, Isaac, they will avoid you, point at you, talk about you, and consider you unworthy for the things you need for a good life. They will think that you are too mentally unfit to depend upon.” He stared at me with a sternness in his face for what seemed like several minutes, even though it was probably closer to 30 seconds. I stared back at him, silently, until he resumed his therapeutic Mr. Roger’s routine.
“Isaac, do you know what is necessary for a good life?” I shrugged like I couldn’t care less, and I couldn’t. I had heard this lecture from my parents and felt angered that they paid this guy to tell me the same thing.
“A good life, my boy, requires good paying employment, health insurance benefits, inclusion and participation in the Jewish community and local synagogue, the respect of family and friends, and a decent Jewish woman from a good family to marry and bring the blessings of your own children into the world. If you are thought of as meshugeh, nobody will trust those things to you. Do you understand my boy?”
I shrugged again, followed by a barely audible “yes,” just to get him off my back.
At age 13, Dr. Bergman considered me to be ready for manhood, according to Jewish law, and thus ready to behave responsibly; or more specifically to stop behaving meshugeh. For reasons of self-preservation, I agreed with him. The thought of becoming a homeless person, or being strung out on antipsychotic drugs, or tortured with electric shock therapy scared me straight, as they say, or scared me sane in this case, albeit temporarily.
Dr. Bergman did the job he was paid for, which was to convince me to look and behave as if normal, even if I continued being crazy inside. His theory, in so many words, was that if I practiced being sane, then eventually I would become sane. He borrowed that idea from the Talmud as I discovered later on, even though it was referring to generosity and other esteemed Jewish values, not sanity. The deed – not the thoughts or motivations lurking behind a deed – is considered most important in Judaism. But nevertheless, I had some marbles loose and I knew it, but decided to hide them so I could get along in my world, and not out of any reverence towards my Jewish heritage or a silly notion that pretending to be sane leads to sanity.
The following day, my second therapy session was about the so called “meshugass” I hallucinated during my sleepwalks. At the doctor’s request, I described in detail what I’d been experiencing, but excluded my awake or partially awake encounters with my imaginary brother Davey and late grandfather. I didn’t want him knowing that I was seeing apparitions.
The doctor responded with a long winded monologue of psychological gibberish, which I was not ready to understand. I wondered if he forgot that I was only 13 years old. But when he finished, he gave a long stare at the blankness on my face and said, “Not to worry Isaac, I will explain this to your folks and write it down, just so your future counselors have it for reference.” Apparently, he had not convinced himself that pretending to be sane would cure me in the long-term, despite his Talmudic rant.
He spoke with my parents in his office after sending me to the waiting room, where I discovered Mrs. Rizzo typing behind the reception desk. Davey had his arms tightly wrapped around her waist, his head flush against her backside while she continued to type.
I resumed my daydream of taking Davey’s place and wrapping my arms around Mrs. Rizzo, but that ended quickly when the lights flickered and I heard the thunder outside. Clearly, God was warning me to quit on this daydream. The erupting moon; grandpa wanting me to rescue the Torah; Mrs. Rizzo’s look of disgust last summer; and now the thunder were my proof of this. I didn’t want to put my parents and sisters through my nightmare again. Too much was at stake: the moon, the Torah, God’s approval, family dignity, and my survival in the world – the real world. Mrs. Rizzo was turning out to be not such a good thing. We needed to stop this! I needed to discuss this with little Davey.
After 20 minutes or so, my parents exited the doctor’s office with a look of contentment on their faces. I assumed that they considered me to be cured or not as crazy as they first thought, especially after hearing all that psychological spiel from the doctor. My dad asked me if I felt better after spending time with the doctor, and I replied, “Yeah dad, he made me feel better,” which was a lie. I then said with much fervor, “Mrs. Rizzo works here dad. She works behind the counter over there. Look dad!” I pointed at her, thinking he would share my enthusiasm. Instead, my parents looked at each other with smug smirks, serenely nodding to each other in agreement, as if I had just confirmed what the doctor told them. And that was the end of my two days of therapy with Dr. Bergman. I was supposedly fixed now and expected to behave like a normal 13 year old at my bar mitzvah on Saturday.
Before leaving the therapy office however, my parents chatted with Mrs. Rizzo at the reception desk while I remained seated. I could not hear the conversation, but noticed Mrs. Rizzo look over at me with concern several times – while clutching her cross and putting her hand over her mouth again. At the end of their conversation, my mother consoled her with a hug and apologized for something I could not make out. My parents looked back at me with the same disgusted look I remembered on Mrs. Rizzo’s face last summer.
Good thing I had not outed Davey’s continued existence. The poor little guy was terrified and cowering again under a chair in the waiting room.
Silent suffering
My parents did not confront me regarding the hug incident, probably per the advice of Dr. Bergman, who was trying to keep me sane for the bar mitzvah. And by the time the big day was over, my transgression with Mrs. Rizzo and the meshugass with my grandfather were apparently water under the bridge for my parents, since none of it was ever mentioned again – not even a disgusted look. I think they were happy with my performance at the bar mitzvah, and had bigger concerns with Anne and her change of religious allegiance, which became an ongoing source of distress for them. I was off the hook with my parents, and seemingly with the Rizzos as well, even though my friendship with Jack was never fully restored and I never received a hug or sweet treat from Mrs. Rizzo ever again.
Silently though, I continued dwelling on the events of 1969 through middle age, feeling tormented at times by daydreams and delusions involving Mrs. Rizzo; followed by apocalyptic nightmares involving Torahs, Christian crosses, and natural disasters of biblical proportions. I shared this pain silently with an imaginary little boy named Davey, who was an ever present doppelgänger of my needy younger self, following me everywhere for almost 40 years, and showing me, through imagination and delusions, the things I needed but could not have.
Bar Mitzvah and beyond
As for my bar mitzvah day, grandpa stood in the corner of the synagogue during my reading from the Torah. I heard him softly recite the Hebrew words as I read them, just like how we studied together back home. This comforted me a great deal and increased my fluency, as if he were speaking through me.
At the conclusion of the ceremony, he picked up the rescue Torah that had first appeared in my sleepwalk, held it close to him for several minutes like he was cradling a baby, and then leaned it against the synagogue wall. Grandpa pointed to the Torah and looked at me with a smile and affirmative nod, and then he was gone again. I knew that he wanted me to have the rescue Torah, but the sane part of my brain knew it was not really there. Attempting to lift a bolted chair or any other fixture – while thinking it was a Torah – would not support my efforts to appear sane to the congregation and Jewish community. My parents and sisters were proud of me that day, or appeared that way, and so I was not about to disappoint or embarrass them with more craziness again – or “meshugass” as Dr. Bergman called it.
I went back to the temple a couple of days later on my bike, being very soft on my feet as I re-entered the synagogue, which was empty except for Davey sitting quietly with his big, sad eyes watching me. I searched the entire sanctuary for the rescue Torah, but it was no longer there and neither was grandpa. I would not see him again until Mrs. Rizzo’s funeral, even though he visited my dreams for many decades following my bar mitzvah.
The dream was always the same:
He stands up in the middle of a temple congregation; walks to a corner of the synagogue; and smiles at me and points to the rescue Torah, which is propped up against a wall. In response, I stand up and push my way through a congregation of angry temple members, who tug at me, push me, trip me, and scold me to sit down. I feel desperate to reach grandpa and the Torah, and I plead with them to let me through. When I finally reach the corner where grandpa was standing, he and the rescue Torah are gone. I could never muster enough strength to make it through the angry crowd. I tried a little bit harder with each subsequent dream, but could never reach grandpa or the Torah in time.
The weekly recurrences of the dream finally stopped when I reached the age of 50, as did the continuous presence of Davey and any lingering ruminations over Mrs. Rizzo, an elderly lady by that time. It was all linked together in some way, but something inside of me had called it quits, and it mostly stopped as a result. About five years later though, I came across Mrs. Rizzo’s obituary and decided to attend her graveside ceremony, to pay my respect to this lady who dominated so much of my inner world over the years.
Mrs. Rizzo’s funeral
I walked through the gate and crept my way towards the east end of the cemetery, eventually positioning myself under the canopy of a big old tree, hoping that the dark shadow of foliage would help me avoid detection. I stood there as stiff as the tree trunk, eyes fixed and turning my head like an owl, stealthily scanning the unfolding scene taking place at the opposite end of the cemetery, where Mrs. Rizzo was being put to rest. There was a tall Christian cross planted in the ground just beyond the opening to her grave. My elderly parents and sister Anne, now a fully converted Christian, stood by the cross. Anne kissed her hanging cross and touched it to Mrs. Rizzo’s graveyard cross.
In the distance, under another tree, my little brother and grandpa stood side by side. Grandpa held his rescue Torah and looked at me with groggy eyes, as if he had trouble keeping them open. He had aged significantly and become fragile since I last saw him in my dreams. Davey hadn’t aged a day, as he was always and forever a little boy, even if only in my mind. He looked at the grave with tears streaming down his gentle, innocent face, and then looked back at me – I felt his despair. He waved to me while still holding on to my model lunar lander, followed by grandpa waving to me, and then both of them just stood there for several minutes, looking at each other, as if pondering what to do. I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. I stared at them while feeling cemented in place with sadness and regret, mostly for them, feeling that I had failed them both. Finally, they turned the other way, held hands, and walked off into the blindingly bright sun until I could not see them anymore.
The morning moon was still visible beyond the tree line, but very much intact. My right ear continued ringing badly from the tinnitus, until I heard a door slam shut from somewhere, which stopped the ringing. No more tinnitus for the first time since my backyard sleepwalk – only the sounds of birds, the breeze, and the distant traffic of the highway. Everyone was gone, including my late parents, Anne, Davey and grandpa. There was no longer any sign of a funeral either. Mrs. Rizzo’s cross looked aged and weather worn. For the first time since childhood, I was wide awake, hearing and seeing the world outside of me without the distortions of a broken mind. I walked over to Mrs. Rizzo’s grave and sat by her cross, feeling tempted to wrap my arms around it, but keeping my hands to myself this time.
© 2018 David M. Rubin. All rights reserved.
Glossary: Meshugeh – Yiddish word meaning crazy. Meshugass – Yiddish word meaning crazy antics, insanity, or madness.
Note: The above story is entirely fictional. All events, situations, circumstances, and characters depicted in this story are the products of my creative imagination. Any similarities between story characters and specific people in the real world are purely coincidental and unintentional. My characters are composites of “possible” personality types, behaviors, and quirks that interest me.
Notes from David 