Free Between Gods: A Memoir by Alison Pick

overpowering. We need to fortify ourselves, to push back against it, to find our own way to light the darkness. Our own Jewish way.”
    Lay off my holiday, I think instinctively.
    I open one eye; the rabbi is looking directly at me.
    I close my eye, chastened. But in my mind’s eye my dukes are still raised.
    “Now picture a menorah,” she continues in her singsongy voice. “Perhaps the special menorah you had as a child.”
    I exhale, refocusing. A menorah, okay. That was the one Jewish item we did have, at Granny and Gumper’s house in Quebec. It was pushed to the very back of the highest shelf of a huge walnut cabinet Granny and Gumper managed to smuggle out of Europe. Nobody mentioned the menorah; it was never lit. And instead of eight branches, it had six.
    Rabbi Glickman says, “Picture the menorah. Envision the row of unlit candles.”
    I do.
    “Now light a match,” she says.
    I imagine striking the flint, wait for the little flame to rise, but my brain refuses the image. The rabbi is instructing the other students to light the candles one by one. I try, try again. But again my mind balks. It knows the light is a lie.
    We learn that Kislev, the dark month, is also the month of dreams. Almost all the dreams that appear in the Torah occur in Kislev. Back from class, I fall into a deep sleep while the first snow falls outside my window. I dream that my cell rings. When I answer, Eli whispers in my ear. Come with me to Paris .
    I know him in my dream by his Hebrew name, Moshe.
    Come with me , he whispers again.
    Is this the still, small voice within? Or is it a test, a temptation?
    On Friday afternoon my phone buzzes in my pocket. “Let’s meet up,” Eli says.
    He sounds different from the dream. Buoyant, and matter-of-fact.
    There’s no discussion about who will be the one to cross Toronto.
    An hour later I ring his doorbell; there’s the sound of footsteps from deep within the house. After several minutes he appears, wearing a beige cable-knit sweater. There’s a fire in the grate, and behind him our Scotch is on the table, already poured. I feel, for a moment, that I could actually step into this advertisement, which could be for booze, or J. Crew, or for some other life I’m meant to be living. Maybe this is my chance to leave my lead cloak behind forever.
    Eli takes my coat, kisses me on the cheek. “How’ve you been?”
    “Not great.”
    “Still feeling down?”
    “You could say that.”
    “Well, you look good.”
    He ushers me into the glossy magazine.
    We settle beside each other on the couch. I notice that the photo of his girlfriend, the one that used to be on the coffee table, has been removed. I put my feet in their wool socks up on the ottoman.
    “It’s been a long week,” I say, although of course it’s been more than a week: it’s been a month, a decade, a lifetime. Because this is the thing about depression, or one of the things that makes it so awful: you cannot, no matter the effort, remember life without it. You know, intellectually, that there have been periods of happiness. Of peace and ease. But knowing and believing are two different things.
    “How’ve you been?” I ask.
    “Good,” he says. “Busy polishing my dreidels.”
    I smile.
    “I was thinking,” he says. “My mum is having a Hanukkah party on Saturday.”
    “Oh?”
    I wait. Two seconds. Three.
    “It might be interesting for you,” he says. “Because of what you’re exploring.”
    A vision of his family home, the crystal chandelier ablaze, a long table laden with the traditional latkes and jelly doughnuts, rises up in my mind. His mother, a beautiful woman with the same olive skin as Eli, stands with a match poised over the menorah. She gestures me to her side, puts an arm close around my shoulder. She invites me to light the candles. As I do, she sings the blessing. My harmony weaves through hers, as though I’ve known this song my whole life.
    “I’d love to come,” I say, jumping on the invitation