Free Between Gods: A Memoir by Alison Pick Page A

before I can remember to try to sound aloof. “Thanks!”
    He grins.
    I pull my daybook out of my purse to mark down the date. “Just let me—” I say, flipping through the pages. Then I realize. The party falls on Degan’s birthday. We’re going to be up at the cabin.
    “Oh shit,” I say. I check the date again to make certain. “No. I’ve got plans.”
    “Really?” Eli says. “Can you get out of them?”
    I rub my temples, digging into them with my thumbs.
    “No,” I say. “I can’t.”
    We’re sitting close to each other, our hands just a few inches apart. I see out of the corner of my eye that Eli has stuck his index finger out, in my direction. I instinctively do the same. The tips of our fingers touch.
    “That’s too bad,” he says. “I was hoping you could come.”
    He turns and looks me in the eye. “I’m happy to see you,” he says.
    The heat rises to my cheeks. I want to meet his acknowledgement with my own, to tell him I am happy to see him, too, but all I can manage is “Likewise.”
    “Really,” he says. “I’ve been thinking of you.”
    It’s hard to hold his eye. I want him to continue at the same time as wanting him to stop. The impulses push up against each other inside me, competing like sisters.
    The sun is setting: for a second time I’ve found myself here at the beginning of the Sabbath. Eli leans over and touches my cheek.
    My palms are sweating. I can feel my pulse at my neck, so close to where his hand is resting. I force myself to pull back.
    “I should go,” I say.
    He smiles and sighs. “Yeah,” he says. “You probably should.”
    He lowers his hand to his lap. I immediately regret what I’ve said.
    “Do you want me to go?” I ask.
    He smiles again, a rueful smile. “You probably should.”
    I walk down the Danforth with my hands in my pockets. The lights from the storefronts cannot touch me. I think of Lucy’s confidence: The only way to really get it back would be to marry a Jew . My chance is gone. My one chance lost. I can’t see another.
    On Sunday I go for a massage. The masseuse, Yona, is a Jew married to a Gentile. The first thing she told him when they got together was that their future children (I picture his eyebrows rising) would be brought up as Jews.
    I take off my clothes and lie face down on the massage table. Yona doesn’t ask how I am. I don’t tell her. I lie like a corpse whileshe digs her fingers into my shoulders, my back, pulling and prying the secrets from my cells. Tears roll down my face and splash on the floor. It’s the opposite of a burial. It’s an unearthing.
    After, I go out onto the street, my loose, pummelled muscles tensing against the cold. On impulse, I fumble in my pocket for my cell. There’s a message waiting from Dad: “Call me right away,” he says. “It’s urgent.”
    I stand on the freezing sidewalk panicking, pressing the wrong buttons through my gloves. I breathe deeply, force myself to slow down. When Dad finally answers, I don’t bother with hello. “Is everything okay?” I ask.
    “Sure!” he booms. “It’s fine! I just wanted to tell you something I learned about Gumper’s mother.”
    I let my breath out slowly. A cloud appears in the cold air in front of my face.
    “Sweetie? Are you there?”
    “I’m here,” I say.
    The dog barks in the background. “The thing I learned is about Gumper’s mother, Ruzenka. It’s about her last name,” Dad says.
    “Bondy?”
    “Yes. It’s from the Sephardic name Bondia.”
    “Oh?”
    “And from Bon dia in Catalan.”
    “Which means?”
    “In English, ‘Good day.’ In Hebrew, ‘Yom tov .’ ”
    A smile comes over my face. I stomp my feet to warm them.
    “So our name is a celebration. A happy day.”

fourteen
    O UR CLASS MEETS AGAIN , two weeks early, because people will be going away over the “winter holiday”—which is code, I realize, for Christmas. I arrange to meet Rabbi Glickman before the class, to level with her. To tell her how