Free As Close to Us as Breathing: A Novel by Elizabeth Poliner

problem,” he said quietly. “God, no. Just a touch of worry. That’s all.”
    He looked up at the concerned men surrounding him. How glad he was to know them, he thought, scanning the familiar faces. How lucky each morning to be right there with them. Indeed the minyan’s love at that moment was as palpable and clear as any my father had known, even Ada’s, he realized, even his kids’. He sat in the chair and the cluster of men moved in one motion, like an amoeba might move, a shifting blob of life and energy, inches closer toward the chair, toward him. Jerome Kaminsky began fanning him, while his brother Nelson and Nathan Novak gripped him, one man to each of his shoulders. As Mort observed the men’s attention he was reminded of his wedding day, when he’d been lifted in a chair by a group of men not unlike this group, lifted high in the air in this very synagogue, this very room, which that day was decorated with flowers and had tables of food set out that were overflowing. He felt just that way again, like they’d gathered around him and in doing so had lifted him up. With gratitude he looked once again from one man, one friend, one prayer brother to the next. Howard, he would tell his son when he saw him, gently and wisely teaching him, just as his father had once taught him: This Jewishness is no game. It’s nothing to toy with. It’s your essence, he’d say, simply enough. It’s your very soul.
    Now that he’d recovered the men returned to their prayer, for they could pray and they could keep an eye on him and they could shift like an amoebic blob when necessary and all the while they never missed a beat of the service. The last of the Kaddishes now approached and this would be a mourner’s Kaddish, Mort knew. As he struggled to stand and then, feet planted, to steady himself, the group turned to him, and looking out he saw many pairs of eyes questioning his rising at all, much less his rising to mourn.
    “Babe Ruth,” he said, by way of explanation. All the rest was just too complicated. “I’ve been anxious, lately, for the Babe.”
    But that was all the explanation needed.
    Suddenly, with Ruth recalled, they were all mourners, though the great man—not a Jew but close enough—hadn’t fallen just yet. Nevertheless, they bowed their heads, began the Kaddish, and, together, the men prayed.
      
     
    When he left the shul moments later my father felt as he always did: cleansed and clearheaded. He shook hands with his minyan brothers, smacked their backs, and watched them scatter.
    When you got right down to it, he understood anew, trailing Nelson at this point as they made their way back to the car, life was pretty simple. Just one rule, above all others. He looked up to the sky, a flawless, bright blue, and then at the houses and buildings on Middletown’s Broad Street, the rows of cars parked neatly along each side. Everything was God, he told himself, nodding.
    Then he inhaled deeply.
    For every breath was Him.
    *  *  *
     
    Howard snored. That’s how I knew he was going to be late that Friday morning, by the sounds emanating from the thin walls of the cottage well past seven a.m., when he should have risen. Freedom can be a complicated thing, and even at the very start of summer Howard had grabbed a little too much, too soon.
    When he did wake it was already twenty past, and the sisters, who had left some time ago for their dunk, weren’t back yet. The cottage was quiet. Howard changed that with a thud, then a worried “Oh, shit. Shit. ” Soon enough he was making his way down the cottage’s creaky and by then quite sandy stairs, then tiptoeing around Nina and me lying in the sofa bed, as he looked for the car keys he’d last dropped into a living room ashtray. A moment later he walked past us again, into the dining room, where he rummaged through the mound of unfolded laundry covering the large oak table, and then he went into the kitchen, where I could hear him open the fridge. I