that isn’t supposed to be there.
Ari Rosensweig, he says, how are you?
I don’t know how to answer him.
I want to tell him
that my mother is gone every day.
I want to tell him that my father left,
and I don’t understand why.
I want to tell him that my heart is on fire over a girl.
I want to tell him that I’m trying so hard
to change my life.
I want to tell him that I can’t do it.
I have friends, but I’m lonely.
I want to tell him that I don’t understand these prayers.
I want to ask him if God is real, and why he cares about any of this.
but
I just say, Okay.
He blinks. Smiles.
And your mother?
I tell him the truth,
that she’s painting
and sculpting a lot,
she’s very, very busy, and we’re
spending a lot of time at Stinson Beach.
He asks me
about my father.
I wait. I let the silence slip through my fingers.
He left, I blurt out.
The rabbi looks at me.
Without any words
he goes to his desk,
finds a bag of saltwater taffy,
walks over and sits
down next to me.
Silently, he puts two wrapped
pieces of blue taffy in my hand,
squeezes my shoulder, and says,
Let’s begin.
When I Get Home
All the lights are on.
All the windows open.
The sound of Zamfir’s pan flute
fills the apartment.
Zamfir, the Romanian pan flute player
who, my mom says,
is the greatest who ever lived.
When I hear his music,
I know my mom
has had an especially hard day.
She won’t even talk to me.
The Truth
I went to see the rabbi today.
She smokes on the stairs
outside the kitchen door.
It was good, I say.
I walk to the counter,
find scrambled eggs,
bacon, sausage, a few grapes.
Breakfast for dinner?
Silence
I was worried sick,
she says, looking down the street,
away from me—
Damn it,
she shouts.
The words bounce
from window to window.
Who
do you
think you are!
She stomps her foot,
then lurches forward,
leaning, bent over.
She coughs out of her throat,
fights for air.
She coughs,
tries to talk,
but her breath
devours her words.
I think of what to say,
but nothing comes
except the desire
to make
up a story
to make
her feel better,
but I don’t want to lie, so I just wait.
Until
she lifts her head,
opens her mouth,
sucks in the atmosphere.
The air races into her,
becomes fire in her belly,
forms one loud gasp,
then
releases,
into
screams
screams
screams
into some turbulent vortex
spinning, rising
higher and higher,
until she just
stops.
In that moment,
I think she might somehow
evaporate,
a woman
all gone.
I didn’t think
that she would worry.
I’ve been left to myself
so much.
She slowly turns
one leg at a time,
her frame bent,
the glass still vibrating.
I wasn’t sure if I should go, Mom.
I won’t go again.
No, she says, suddenly calm.
Her eyes are murky, exhausted.
I’m so sorry, Mom.
I won’t go again, who cares
about this bar mitzvah anyway!
It’s just something Dad wanted.
I try my best
to be on her side,
even though I do care.
I would cry, she says,
but I have nothing left.
She puts her hand on my shoulder.
Her face quivering,
That wasn’t meant for you,
my big man, she says.
Go see the rabbi.
This bar mitzvah
is important for all of us.
She looks me in the eyes.
I think of a million questions.
I don’t ask any of them.
Then she pulls me into her.
You know I love you, she says.
I do know.
You’re growing up so much. Her sobs turn into a laugh.
I guess it’s time to get you your own phone.
She puts her hands on my middle.
You are getting skinny! She coughs,
still crying off and on.
I have to get some sleep.
She walks toward her bedroom.
Oh. She turns, calming down a bit.
Sunday, I think.
Sunday we can go back to the beach.
Calling Lisa
I call Lisa
to let her know
that Sunday we get to go back!
She doesn’t answer,
and there is no voice mail.
I wish I could text her,
but whatever’s
going on, I hope she’s okay,
all the way over on the other side
of the Golden Gate Bridge.
I tell my mom
to call her mom,
but she doesn’t answer either.
Maybe, she says, we can stop
by on our way.
Gretchen
I look for some graph paper
so I can finally work
on our game a little bit,
but I find Gretchen’s number
in my backpack, pushed
between the jacket fold
of Mysterious World.
I dial the number.
Hello? she answers in her scratchy,
freckled voice. Hello?
Hello, I say. This is Ari, um, Lisa’s friend?
I am so nervous.
I know who you are, she says.
She laughs immediately,
like my voice is the voice
she’s been waiting for all morning.
I feel my body sit straighter,
my mind ease. We talk,
and it’s good.
I can’t stop talking.
I tell her about things
I did in these few days I’ve been here.
I tell her truth mixed with untruths.
I tell her about how my dad left.
Oh my god, she says. I’m so sorry.
I tell her other things.
I’ve been riding my bike
all the way to Pier 39,
over to the arcade.
I played some basketball
down by the Marina.
I bought a bunch of new comics.
Do you read comics? I ask.
No, she says, but I want to.
I don’t tell her how much
I stare into the mirror,
guarding my body against
gaining any more weight back
or how I’m starting t
o wonder
if I have to stay on this diet forever.
When I stop talking,
her voice is a waterfall.
She tells me about how she thinks
in high school she might become an artist,
and how she is trading Quiet Riot for Prince.
because he’s so rad.
Before we hang up,
she makes me promise
to call her back in a few days.
I promise, and then I ask her,
Have you talked to Lisa?
You totally like her, she says.
Gretchen laughs into the phone
and her laugh makes me laugh too.
Lisa’s totally awesome,
but so am I.
Just wait till we meet.
August
Level 3
At the start of August,
I have lost almost
30 pounds.
All the biking and swimming
is changing me too.
The insides of my thighs
are a straight line
all the way to my knees,
but most of all,
when I see myself
in the mirror
or a store window,
I notice
my jaw,
smooth,
just one chin, my chin,
at the end,
where it’s supposed to be.
My mother asks me
if I’m ready for Level 3.
I’m supposed to eat more carbs now.
I’m supposed to stress my body with food.
Test it.
Stress it?
I don’t want to. I’m tired.
Berries
cherries
melons
orange
pear
a small banana
The book says I may soon experience uncontrollable cravings.
But I have come so far. How could it get any worse?
Mysterious World
There will always be things unknown and perhaps unknowable.
Arthur C. Clarke
I open up Arthur C. Clarke’s
Mysterious World
and stare at the empty eyes of the crystal skull,
let myself walk through those deep corridors.
I want to be like Arthur C. Clarke,
a naturalist. I want to carry
a notebook and a camera,
travel the world unlocking
mysteries of Earth:
frogs and fish falling from the sky,
the Green Children from Woolpit,
who spoke a language
never heard before.
Like the travelers who
first discovered animals, fairy-tale monsters,
nunda, the king cheetah, the okapi,
the mountain gorilla.
I imagine my own expeditions traveling
to the deep Amazon, Kilimanjaro, Loch Ness,
or through the Himalayas.
In the introduction,
Clarke writes,
The universe is such a strange and wonderful place that reality will always outrun the wildest imagination.
The letters are worn from my finger
passing through the words.
He reminds me that no matter what,
the one thing
that’s not a lie,
is that mystery is real.
31
When I go back to the beach, I think,
I might even take off my shirt.
I practice in our apartment,
walk to the tall mirror in the hallway,
stare at the white tank top,
and slowly lift it off.
I try to unhunch my shoulders,
but they feel cemented
from years of
trying to be more compact.
This time, as I stand up,
my stomach
and my belly
sit firmly above
the button of my shorts.
When I lean my head forward,
I have one chin, and my legs
are thinner. I think I might
even be taller.
This doesn’t look like me.
It can’t be me.
I don’t look like this,
normal.
What if I didn’t weigh myself.
Not now.
Not ever again?
This can’t be right,
to live like this,
scale to scale,
pound to pound,
forever?
I walk slowly to the bathroom,
eye the scale, and step
one foot in front of the other.
The tiny white stage,
an altar.
Hello, scale, I whisper,
and close my eyes
so the numbers have time
to settle. Before I open my eyes,
I tell myself a lie,
that I don’t care,
but I push it away,
and instead I utter something
like a prayer.
I open my eyes,
see the number,
do the math in my head
of all the weight I have lost.
21
16
and now: 31.
I breathe,
step off.
Step on
right away
to make sure.
31. Thirty-one.
31.
31.
It feels good,
but then, for a moment,
I think about the 31.
Where does it all go,
so much weight
suddenly gone
Inside, I can still feel it,
but it’s different,
still a part of me,
but transformed,
not heavy anymore,
just weightless memories
of the real me.
The Heaviest Water Is My Father
I go with my mother to do errands
in the morning, and we have breakfast
at the Chestnut Street Bar and Grill.
She says I can have one piece of toast,
but I don’t. I don’t feel like eating.
I’m tired of errands and meetings,
of always wondering what will happen.
I have one more meeting today. With a lawyer.
I look up from my eggs.
You look so different, she says.
I don’t respond. She keeps talking.
The business is sold.
I just need to sign the papers today.
So, she changes the subject,
I have a new idea
for a series of drawings.
She pulls a pen from her purse,
sketches a perfect hand reaching down
from the sky onto a beach,
talks to me about
some ancient goddess,
some story about rebirth
and redemption.
I think this new work
will make the ground shake.
Why? I ask, annoyed. I can’t take it anymore.
She looks at me, draws her napkin toward her. Why?
Yes, I say. Why does it even matter?
Sometimes it seems like the art
matters more than I do.
Maybe my dad isn’t here
because he felt like this too.
I look down into my plate
then at her hand sketching on the napkin.
For once, I wish she would stop sketching.
Stop, I say, loud.
The man at the next table looks
up from his book.
She leans in, holds my hands
like I’m a little boy.
Mom, I groan, stop.
It’s okay, Ari, she tries to soothe me.
Expression is everything.
&nb
sp; I shake her hands off me,
stand up,
throw down my napkin,
my hands balled into fists.
In this moment
more than any other time,
I want my father.
I want HIM to explain this to me,
what it means to sell a business,
to leave your family.
I want concrete rules,
like D&D rules.
Roll this die and 16–20
is a hit.
Ari, she says, tries to calm me,
and I feel the people
in the restaurant looking.
I walk toward the door.
I want to rip the menus off the wall.
I want to feel ocean water on my face.
I want to be someplace quiet,
reading Mysterious World.
I want my father.
Where is he?
Does he care that she’s selling the business?
How can he let all this happen?
Where was he when I was on the bike path?
I want him to know
that the time he told me about,
when he was a kid
and they called him Jewboy,
happened to me too.
I want to tell him
that I still
watch our
old shows on Netflix.
I want to tell him
that I went to see the rabbi
all by myself.
I sit down outside
on a bench near
the restaurant window.
When my mother comes,
she looks embarrassed, tired,
but she sits down on the bench
close to me.
It’s then that I feel tears.
I can’t stop them.
I think about how maybe
my father was the heaviest
part of me.
And now that he has drained
away, I feel less than who I am.
She pulls me
by my elbow
up and onto my feet.
I don’t fight it.
When we reach our apartment
she puts her hand on my head.
Do you have your keys?
My breathing is slow now. Normal.
It’s going to be okay, Ari.
I turn up the stairs.
I’ll see you tonight!
Hey, why don’t you call Lisa again?
See if she wants us to pick her up?