I couldn’t get over how his hair had turned gray. Even his moustache was gray. But those eyes. He still had those same furtive brown more-sensitive-than-thou eyes.
“I think now I take a much darker view,” Gary was telling me.
“What do you mean? You always had a dark view,” I said. “Remember the honeycreepers? Remember how Hawaii was spoiled already by the time you got there? You were always a pessimist. You loved being a pessimist.”
“And what about you?” Gary asked.
“The opposite!”
“I meant, what are you doing now?”
“Oh!” I said. “We’re living in Sharon. And Mikhail is a pianist, and we have a band. But actually he’s a classical pianist. If you ever have a fund-raiser,” I said, “he does fund-raisers. He could do a concert for you. If you ever want to come out and hear him play, he can play any music. He’s an incredible musician.”
Mikhail was turning red. He didn’t like me to boast, but I couldn’t help it. Since one of Mikhail’s main problems professionally was that he didn’t publicize his own work, and since I was so proud of him, any chance I got, I tended to toot his horn. “And then we’re taking care of Zohar, along with Mikhail’s aunt Lena.”
“So you’ve ended up in the sandwich generation.”
“What’s the sandwich generation?”
“The one in the middle, managing both child care and elder care,” Gary said. “I’m going through that with my mother.”
“No, I meant, Aunt Lena is taking care of the baby too. And I’m managing an organic juice store in Brookline, and I’m studying for my HN—to be a licensed herbal nutritionist. Jewishly we’re in a Havurah.”
“And you’ve found what you’ve been looking for?” Gary asked.
“Well,” I said, “to be honest, I’m not crazy about the discussions at our Havurah, since people are so long winded, and anybody can talk as long as she wants about whatever issues happen to occur to her, whether or not it’s relevant to the text, so that aspect isn’t so great. But the singing is good. The singing is really really nice. Oh, did you mean, in my life? Did you mean, in my life in general?”
“I think he’s hungry,” Mikhail said to me.
“Okay,” I said. “But get his bib. In general in my life, you know what the thing is? I stopped looking. The thing I realized was I didn’t need to go on looking anymore, and learning this and reading that and taking classes, because God was actually looking for me! So I’ve decided to be a receptor. I’ve decided to be more of a listener, and a sounding board who is open to God in all the ways he might come—visions, dreams, prophecies, music—in all his myriad forms. Do you know what I mean?”
Gary shook his head at me. I think, but I’m not completely sure, I saw him roll his eyes. He said, “You haven’t changed at all.”
“Oh, I have!” I told him. “How can you say that?” But maybe when enough time passes, people can’t even see the changes in you anymore. Maybe after a certain point their memory of you is so strong they can’t shake it. I couldn’t hold it against him for remembering me as that flaky, self-absorbed person he used to know, since, after all, I remembered him the same way!
The evening was mellowing into this sea-blue. We oldies huffed and puffed. We wove in and out of circles. Swung in lines. Sweat dripped down my face. No question I was out of shape. Yet, as I danced, I felt a calm come over me. I wasn’t conscious of how I looked or how I moved. I barely noticed Gary, or anyone else at all. I wasn’t conscious even of the steps. My feet were in a trance; they moved by themselves, remembering everything. So I danced, and I was not in this time or that. It was like, so you’re forty pounds heavier. So what? So you’re twenty years older. If you were aged, you could be ripe. You could be vinted. Cured.
My feet got so hot inside my shoes, I took them off, and also my damp socks, and I danced with the grass tickling my soles. We all danced on the grass, and people’s children ran around or crawled around the edges. And Zohar sat and looked for small rocks that he might swallow, and Mikhail and I had to pry them loose from his hands. A few summer-school students were standing around watching. A little ways off knights-in-armor were running at each other with fake lances tilting, while fair ladies in long satin gowns and cone hats were applauding from lawn chairs. It was a chapter meeting for MIT’s Society for Creative Anachronism.
The sun began to set, and “Hinach Yaffa” started up. That old dance I’d taught back at the temple in Honolulu. I said, “Hey, Mikhail, this one’s easy.”
The old song floated out through the air. Those lyrics from the Song of Songs where that poor girl is searching and searching for her lover and she can’t find him. I understood those verses. What it was like wandering all around, searching, desperate. It was the feeling you got from loving God, yet loving him from this totally unenlightened place; loving him with this intense, unrequited love. Well, that was being a pilgrim. I’d been there. That was burning up inside with being young.
Now here we were outside on the green field, and the words were passionate, but the music was cool and slow. The music was soft like the soft grass.
Hinach yaffa raiti …
Hinach yaffa aynayich yonim …
Shiniech keader haketzuvot shelu min harachtzah….
Baleilot bikashti et sheahavah nafshi …
Bikashtiv vilo mitzativ …
Mitzuni hashomrim hasovivim ba ir….
Et sheahavah naphshi raitem?
Behold, you are beautiful, my love,
Behold, your eyes are like doves behind your veil;
Your teeth are like a flock of ewes, all paired. …
By night I sought him who my soul loves;
I looked for him, but I did not find him;
The watchmen of the city found me.
“Have you see him who my soul loves?”
Mikhail and I, and Zohar in the backpack, were dancing along among the couples, and the dance really was easy. Unlike my ladies Lillian and Henny and Estelle, Mikhail had no trouble with the steps. We were dancing the choruses and the last verses. The tape was winding down. Only then I realized that very quietly, without even intending to, I’d been singing along. And it was Hebrew poetry on my lips, but I understood exactly what I was singing. I knew all the words.
PARADISE PARK
A Dial Press Trade Paperback book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Dial Press hardcover edition published March 2001
Delta Trade Paperback edition published May 2002
Dial Press Trade Paperback edition / March 2006
Published by
The Dial Press
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2001 by Allegra Goodman
The Dial Press and Dial Press Trade Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-49376
eISBN: 978-0-307-57371-1
www.dialpress.com
v3.0
Allegra Goodman, Paradise Park
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