Read Online As Close to Us as Breathing: A Novel by Elizabeth Poliner - Free Book Online Page B

increasingly bewildered thoughts—Where’s Howard? Where is he?—he let the Hebrew ground him: “Restore our judges as in former times,” he prayed, “and our counselors as of yore; remove from us sorrow and sighing, and reign over us, You alone, O Lord, with kindness and compassion, with righteousness and justice.” He read and he davened and still he heard Howard telling him, convincing him, “I’ll come back early, in time for morning minyan.” In his prayer book he read, “Blessed are You, Lord, who crushes enemies and subdues the wicked,” and in his mind he was wagging his finger at Howard, telling him that the thing about Judaism was that either you were in or you were out. The chosen people. Well, it didn’t work to be chosen unless you chose right back. And he had. Mort was in. He was there. He was present. But where the hell are you? he asked Howard.
    He shook his head, attempting to clear it, bowed deeply, and began again.
    “Look with favor, Lord our God, on Your people Israel and pay heed to their prayer,” Mort prayed, though at the same time he heard his father say, speaking of Howard, “He gets that from me.” Mort read, “You are the Beneficent One, for Your mercies never cease,” while the words forming in his mind were goddamnit, goddamnit, goddamnit. The prayer was coming to a close. “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable before You, Lord,” Mort intoned while inwardly he said, strangely enough, shortstop, shortstop. Then, suddenly speaking of Davy and his talent with the glove and ball, he turned to his phantom father and said, gloating: He gets that from me.
      
     
    That was not the prayer, the Amidah, Mort had anticipated. Rather than transcendence he felt in its wake disgrace. His prayer book, usually weightless to the touch, might as well have been made of stones. Even his body, filled by that lightness of spirit he’d gained upon entering the shul, felt deadened by his failure, wobbly, weak. His face, he soon realized, was damp with sweat.
    When he looked around he noticed the men had gathered near him, and Nathan Novak, leaning closest, soon wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Jerome Kaminsky pulled a chair from against a wall and unfolded it, then pointed at Mort, then at the chair.
    You know how bad my voice sounds. Well, it feels just as bad, he almost began to explain to them, his knees quivering just like Babe Ruth’s reportedly had at Yankee Stadium.
    Internal rot. Surely, he reasoned, considering the rancor of his prayer, he had it as bad as Ruth, as bad as his dead father. He wondered: Was he going to die of it too? Was the morning’s visitation of spirit—his father’s and Babe Ruth’s—a kind of premonition? Was that knocking in his dream the knocking not of Howard but of the other world? He then thought of something else, even worse: Did he not know how to be a father?
    For a moment all prayer ceased and the men gathered even more tightly around him. Harold Sokull urged him to sit; he was tired, Harold told him, he didn’t look so good, maybe he needed a rest. It had to be hard, Freddy Horowitz suggested, what with the family gone and all. Abe Leiberman and Stanley Levine pointed at a chair; Jerome Kaminsky was patting his back.
    As Mort eased himself into the chair, Nathan Novak wouldn’t let him go, had his arm in a grip. Once seated, Jerome Kaminsky stepped forward, loosened Mort’s tie. His brother-in-law Leo Cohen then stood before him, holding a glass of water he’d seemed to conjure forth. For an instant my father stared at Leo in disbelief: all those years in the store he’d never seen Leo move so swiftly. But soon his attention shifted. Marvin Abkin was speaking to him, his voice as gentle as he’d ever heard it. “Drink up, big boy. Drink up.”
    Not one man continued to pray without him.
    Finally, Marvin Abkin said, his voice hushed, “Heart? Heart bothering you?”
    Mort shook his head. “Not a heart