was allowed in who didn’t have a good sense of humor – however that humor might have expressed itself. Some people crack jokes all the time; others can lift an eyebrow at the right moment and suddenly everyone in the room is rolling on the floor. A good sense of humor, then, a taste for the ironies of life, and an appreciation of the absurd. But also a certain modesty and discretion, kindness toward others, a generous heart. No blowhards or arrogant fools, no liars or thieves. A Blue Team member had to be curious, a reader of books, and aware of the fact that he couldn’t bend the world to the shape of his will. An astute observer, someone capable of making fine moral distinctions, a lover of justice. A Blue Team member would give you the shirt off his back if he saw you were in need, but he would much rather slip a ten-dollar bill into your pocket when you weren’t looking. Is it beginning to make sense? I can’t pin it down for you and say it’s one thing or another. It’s all of them at once, each separate part interacting with all the others.’
‘What you’re describing is a good person. Pure and simple. My father’s term for it is honest man . Betty Stolowitz uses the word mensch . John says not an asshole . They’re all the same thing.’
‘Maybe. But I like Blue Team better. It implies a connection among the members, a bond of solidarity. If you’re on the Blue Team, you don’t have to explain your principles. They’re immediately understood by how you act.’
‘But people don’t always act the same way. They’re good one minute and bad the next. They make mistakes. Good people do bad things, Sid.’
‘Of course they do. I’m not talking about perfection.’
‘Yes you are. You’re talking about people who’ve decided they’re better than other people, who feel morally superior to the rest of us common folk. I’ll bet you and your friends had a secret handshake, didn’t you? To set you apart from the riffraff and the dumbbells, right? To make you think you had some special knowledge no one else was smart enough to have.’
‘Jesus, Grace. It was just a little thing from twenty years ago. You don’t have to break it down and analyze it.’
‘But you still believe in that junk. I can hear it in your voice.’
‘I don’t believe in anything. Being alive – that’s what I believe in. Being alive and being with you. That’s all there is for me, Grace. There’s nothing else, not a single thing in the whole goddamn world.’
It was a dispiriting way for the conversation to end. My not-so-subtle attempt to tease her out of her dark mood had worked for a while, but then I’d pushed her too far, accidentally touching on the wrong subject, and she’d turned on me with that caustic denunciation. It was entirely out of character for her to talk with such belligerence. Grace seldom got herself worked up over issues of that sort, and whenever we’d had similar discussions in the past (those floating, meandering dialogues that aren’t about anything, that just dance along from one random association to the next), she’d tended to be amused by the notions I’d toss out at her, rarely taking them seriously or presenting a counterargument, content to play along and let me spout my meaningless opinions. But not that night, not on the night of the day in question, and because she was suddenly fighting back tears again, engulfed by the same unhappiness that had swept over her at the beginning of the ride, I understood that she was in genuine distress, unable to stop brooding about the nameless thing that was tormenting her. There were a dozen questions I wanted to ask, but again I held back, knowing that she wouldn’t confide in me until she was good and ready to talk – assuming she ever was.
We had made it over the bridge by then and were traveling down Henry Street, a narrow thoroughfare flanked by red-brick walkups that led from Brooklyn Heights to our place in Cobble Hill, just
‘What you’re describing is a good person. Pure and simple. My father’s term for it is honest man . Betty Stolowitz uses the word mensch . John says not an asshole . They’re all the same thing.’
‘Maybe. But I like Blue Team better. It implies a connection among the members, a bond of solidarity. If you’re on the Blue Team, you don’t have to explain your principles. They’re immediately understood by how you act.’
‘But people don’t always act the same way. They’re good one minute and bad the next. They make mistakes. Good people do bad things, Sid.’
‘Of course they do. I’m not talking about perfection.’
‘Yes you are. You’re talking about people who’ve decided they’re better than other people, who feel morally superior to the rest of us common folk. I’ll bet you and your friends had a secret handshake, didn’t you? To set you apart from the riffraff and the dumbbells, right? To make you think you had some special knowledge no one else was smart enough to have.’
‘Jesus, Grace. It was just a little thing from twenty years ago. You don’t have to break it down and analyze it.’
‘But you still believe in that junk. I can hear it in your voice.’
‘I don’t believe in anything. Being alive – that’s what I believe in. Being alive and being with you. That’s all there is for me, Grace. There’s nothing else, not a single thing in the whole goddamn world.’
It was a dispiriting way for the conversation to end. My not-so-subtle attempt to tease her out of her dark mood had worked for a while, but then I’d pushed her too far, accidentally touching on the wrong subject, and she’d turned on me with that caustic denunciation. It was entirely out of character for her to talk with such belligerence. Grace seldom got herself worked up over issues of that sort, and whenever we’d had similar discussions in the past (those floating, meandering dialogues that aren’t about anything, that just dance along from one random association to the next), she’d tended to be amused by the notions I’d toss out at her, rarely taking them seriously or presenting a counterargument, content to play along and let me spout my meaningless opinions. But not that night, not on the night of the day in question, and because she was suddenly fighting back tears again, engulfed by the same unhappiness that had swept over her at the beginning of the ride, I understood that she was in genuine distress, unable to stop brooding about the nameless thing that was tormenting her. There were a dozen questions I wanted to ask, but again I held back, knowing that she wouldn’t confide in me until she was good and ready to talk – assuming she ever was.
We had made it over the bridge by then and were traveling down Henry Street, a narrow thoroughfare flanked by red-brick walkups that led from Brooklyn Heights to our place in Cobble Hill, just
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