Read Online Prayers for the Living by Alan Cheuse - Free Book Online

the lost city of Atlantis until we reached America?”
    You could say, who was this crazy boy talking like this?
    I knew right away it wasn’t just a boy but some greater chance talking—the oak that grew the branch that lent itself to the splintered pin that stopped the cart that brought the boy to rest here at the side of the stream where I had decided I would end my life.
    Instead, my life began . . . cockeyed—you’re looking at me cockeyed. But don’t deny it, behind every old lady with her hair dyed my color there’s a story like this. Maybe not exactly as much an adventure as this, but some story, a real story. Somewhere a chance comes along—and she either takes it or she doesn’t. In my story, I took. Because what else did I have to hold on to? It was a choice between nothing and something. So what do you choose? Nothing? Don’t kid yourself—you reach out for what saves your life if you have a feeling that you have a life to save.

    â€œS O WHAT YOU ’ RE telling me, darling, is that you ran off with this oxcart driver?”
    â€œYes, we eloped. It took a while, it was a slow elopement, but we eloped. Eventually, we eloped. We fought with my parents—they didn’t want no oxcarter, they wanted a rabbi. But we got married, we had our child, after that we eloped.”
    â€œHow romantic! My own life is much less romantic. Sometime I’ll tell you.”
    â€œI’d love to hear, Mrs. Pinsker, but not now. Now I’m remembering my own. Oi, I remember so hard. How I left a whole world behind, how I saved my life. Because of an oak branch splitting. Because of an axle. Because of a crack in a wheel. God looked away at something when that particular oak was growing, and it made all the difference in my life, in Manny’s, and in the lives of three other women, the daughter-in-law’s, my grandchild’s, and hers .”
    â€œPheeww . . .”
    â€œDon’t make a face. My heart weighs a ton. It feels like it’s going to lay a big sad egg. It hurts my eyes to talk about it. The sun is going down . . . it’s getting late. At times like this I wonder about my parents, about the old country, and, worst of all, or best, I can feel Jacob like they say you miss an arm you’ve lost, a missing limb you miss. I can feel him sitting at this table. His aura, the granddaughter calls such things. She tells me. We talk something about it sometimes. Why should he be gone? And I’m still here? Because, remember what the story was I was just telling you, if I had listened to my parents, obeyed them like a good girl and gone off to the city with the student who smelled like a dog, nobody would have been here. Darling, you would have been drinking coffee alone. We would have been caught by the Nazis and melted like wax for candles. They all went—Mama, Papa, the students of Torah, not so many escaped. So maybe all of that time is like Jacob’s Atlantis, what he talked about, a lost city, a lost continent, I’ve told you about that? Well, I’ll tell you later . . . and who knows what the world would have been if it had lasted? But it wasn’t supposed to, was it? Like that oak pin, it splintered. God looked the other way. But with what was He so busy that He could blink and lose so many of His chosen people? You think He was like me and was having trouble with His eyes?
    â€œCrazy, I suppose. You think I’m talking crazy. But it’s just talk, and I’m just talking.
    â€œI’m telling you, Mrs. Pinsker, I can still smell the woods, the stream where we met, the way the wood, that oak, lay on my nostrils. And the boat, the salty sea, the waves, spray, seabirds calling, the boat swaying under my feet—from the cart to here took so many years, a long ride. Oh, if we could only remember the good things and not the bad! The odor of water and horses and not the stink of boys who smell like