two might become friends,” said Mom, who liked the idea of matched sets, coordinated colors, pairs of shoes lined up heel against heel in a closet. She ran her own business designing intricate ketubahs, or Jewish marriage contracts, carefully inscribing creamy archival paper with Hebrew calligraphy, and then embellishing the words with delicate flowers and Biblical animals in thin shades of gouache or watercolors. When she wasn’t home, I’d peek in her studio, the tubes of paint clipped to a pegboard on the wall, shelves piled with colorful patterned fabric swatches, and her pens and pencils standing stiffly at attention at the back of the broad glass table where she worked.
“I worry about you spending so much time alone,” Mom said.
“I’m fine on my own,” I said. Actually, I was so desperate to find a friend, you could smell it on me, like bad breath.
When I was younger, I used to ride tricycles in packs of boys and girls at the park and draw funny pictures that made my friends laugh at school or birthday parties. But then my voice dropped, hair sprouted under my arms and between my nipples, and the rules of fitting in became mysterious and complicated. As other kids peeled off into private twos and threes and fours, I’d watch from behind my sketchpad and draw cartoons of hairy, sharp-toothed animals chasing my classmates into a deep lake.
In late August, the Taborskys finally moved in. Their builders had demolished the pine forest, except for a thin line of trees at the edge of their backyard, preserved for privacy. All they had left to do was to finish the front lawn, a bumpy patch of plowed earth and a pile of bluegrass rolled up like a carpet.
I was sitting on our front step, trying to draw a rhododendron when I first noticed Mark Taborsky, dressed only in a pair of jeans and stretched out on a newly hung porch swing. Either sleeping or sunbathing—I couldn’t quite tell as I peeked at him through waxy rhododendron leaves. He wore dark aviator style sunglasses, and his bangs fell in soft waves over the lenses. An open book rested on his bare chest, and his rosy feet dangled off the edge of his swing, which swayed slowly in the breeze.
I liked his hair and his sunglasses; both had a sense of style. He was a rabbi’s son, so maybe he had a kind heart. He was reading a book in summer, another hopeful sign.
I tossed my sketchbook on our front steps, then wiped the sweat off my forehead, combed through my hair with my fingers, and crossed the street.
Mark barely stirred in his swinging as I walked up the Taborskys’ newly paved driveway, still tacky from the freshly laid asphalt. I could have stepped away and he probably wouldn’t have noticed, but I kept coming, the way you do in bad dreams. When I stepped onto the porch, he bolted upright, catching the book as it slid down his tanned chest. As he gave my hand a rough shake, I noticed his thick gold ring with his initials, “MT,” and a tiny diamond studded inside the “M.”
“Great book,” I said, nodding at his paperback, To Kill a Mockingbird.
“Yeah, great for putting you to sleep,” he said. “My mom’s making me read it.”
Mark gave me a tour of his house, which smelled dizzyingly of fresh paint. A large neon-colored abstract painting of floating triangles and circles hung above their cream-colored leather couch. Mom could have made them something way better than that.
His bedroom faced mine, and I thought of Anne Shirley and her bosom friend Diana in the book Anne of Green Gables, flashing each other messages using their window shades like telegraph signals.
Mark put on a T-shirt, then fed a cassette into his stereo, something called Bel Biv Devoe. His parents were transferring him to Lev Stern Hebrew because it was closer to their new house than his old school, also Jewish, but more conservative than Stern, the kind of place where boys dressed only in black and white and girls wore denim skirts down to their ankles. At Stern, only tank tops were off limits, for both sexes.
Strangely, Mark didn’t sound the least bit nervous about going to a new school. Already he was going to a party hosted by one of my classmates, a party I hadn’t heard of.
“So the girls at Stern, are they easy?” he asked, flopping down on his bed. His jeans weren’t regular old Levi’s, but Guess, an expensive brand I’d never seen displayed on the crowded racks at Boesky’s Discount Shop for Boys, where my mother bought all my clothes. Next to his bed were a pair of Reebok high tops, fastened with both Velcro and laces, a thing I had not thought possible.
I looked for somewhere to sit, then settled on the carpet, which felt rough on my palms and smelled like wool. “I guess they’re as easy as anywhere.”
Mark grabbed a blue rubber ball off his nightstand, pretended to whip it at me, then snickered when I flinched. “What base have you gotten to with girls?” he asked.
“Not to any base in particular, I don’t think,” I said above the Bel Biv Devoe music, a pack of shrill-voiced guys who kept yelling “Poison!”
“You’re a funny one,” Mark said.
He’d sized me up quickly. The few times I’d politely ask a girl to dance at a bar mitzvah party or school mixer my parents forced me to attend, she’d bite her bottom lip in sorrow and claim that her ankle hurt, or she was saving her dance for someone else. So while my classmates rocked back and forth in each other’s arms, I sipped a Coke at the edge of the dance floor and warbled along faintly to whatever syrupy pop ballad was playing, as if to say, I can be one of you, give me a chance! But the notes rang false. It was like reciting a prayer for a religion that wasn’t mine.
“You guys get in a lot of fights in your school?” Mark asked.
“Fights? Not really.”
Mark made a fist and held it up to my face, very close. “I got this ring for my bar mitzvah. It’s pure gold. See how heavy it is.”
“I see,” I said. The air in that room felt very hot and close.
“If I punched some kid in the face with this ring on, he’d be wearing my initials for a week.” He snorted, then noticed me fanning myself with my hand. “You can take your shirt off if you’re hot.”
“It’s not that bad,” I said, quickly whipping my hand away. “I’m okay.”
“Me and my brother used to live in a rough hood,” he said. “The kids there called us ‘honky’ and ‘cracker.’ It was cool.”
“I bet.” I offered him a tight-lipped smile. I was in way over my head.
“The black kids there used to pound on Jewish wussies like you for fun,” Mark said. “This one kid I knew, they stripped him naked, to see if he was cut.” I shook my head, not understanding. “You know, circumcised.” I said I didn’t believe in lumping people together like that based on skin color, but Mark replied, “Try saying that when they strip you naked. Anyway, they never touched me, or my brother.” I asked Mark why not, and he widened his eyes. “Because they knew if they bothered either one of us, I’d go Medieval on their asses. Want to see? Try to hit me.”
“No thank you.”
“Come on, hit me.” He leaped out of bed and put up his fists.
“I’m really not in the mood . . .” I was racking my brain for an excuse to leave but coming up empty. Meanwhile, he was moving his fists in tight circles, bouncing on his toes. I backed up toward the wall. “Please, stop.”
Mark
