The Calculus of Change Read online

Sincerely,

  Aden Matthews

  In less than twenty-four hours, I receive:

  Dear Aden,

  How wonderful to hear from you! I have often wondered what happened to Vivian’s family. I had reached out to your father a few times after she passed, and never heard anything from him. But I understand that he was in a time of deep grieving, and we lost touch over the years. I knew your mother quite well. Why don’t we meet for coffee, and I can tell you what I remember?

  Warm regards,

  Rabbi Morrey

  ***

  I thought about having Tate here. But if I’d invited him, I would’ve had to explain that I’ve been pretending to have an alive mom. And maybe this is something I need to do alone.

  Rabbi Morrey and I sit outside in what little shade we can find. The sun is shining, the slight wind perfectly cool as it rustles through the remaining leaves on the trees. Rabbi Morey has just enough gray hair on his head to attach the black yarmulke he wears with bobby pins. The wrinkles on his face accent his smile. I can see why he’s a rabbi, someone who’s supposed to be a spiritual guide, a leader, a confidant. I feel like I can be myself with him. He’s at once calm and warm, but still vibrant.

  “You look like her,” he says, and I wonder if it’s just something you say to a girl with a dead mom. But he stares at my face without reserve for a beat, and I can’t doubt his sincerity.

  “So you said you knew her well?”

  “She was a student in my Hebrew school. I saw her daily for a few years in a row. And after that, she came to synagogue services a few times per month. Until she got sick.”

  “What was she like? I mean, of course I remember her, and I know the stories my dad and grandma tell. But what do you think she was like?”

  The rabbi inhales and smiles. He takes his time before responding. “I think she had the same light you do. But she didn’t let it out at first. It wasn’t until she grew up that she really let herself reach her potential. I knew her best as a middle schooler, just before her bat mitzvah. She wasn’t always comfortable in her own skin. Who is at that age?” I wonder what kind of light and potential he’s talking about, but before I have a chance to interrupt, he keeps talking.

  “I believe she used to pal around with a girl named Rachel Labinowitz. You know, girls and best friends.” I do. I think about Marissa. I don’t know any friends of my mom’s named Rachel. I wonder what happened.

  I think he’s going to stop there, but he takes a drink, then says, “Vivian was full of curiosity. I always knew she was destined to do great things.”

  I can’t help myself when I say, “But she didn’t, did she? She died too young.”

  Rabbi Morrey looks at me for a long while, and I look back, knowing full well that I’m challenging him to contradict me.

  “Yes, she died too young. But she did great things. She lived. She was joyful. She wrote music.”

  “You know about that?”

  “Everyone who knew your mom knew her music. It was one of her gifts to the world.”

  “But she never made anything of herself with it.”

  The rabbi chuckles under his breath. “No, she wasn’t famous. Is that how you’d define success?”

  I pause. I know he has a point. “Of course not. But”—I’m searching for the right words, searching for a way to defend myself—“wouldn’t you say someone who pursues her dreams is successful? I’m not sure my mom ever did that.”

  “Ah. The pursuit of dreams.” I like the guy, but I could reach out and slap Rabbi Morrey when he says ah like that. As though he knows anything about me.

  “What do you imagine your mother’s dreams were?”

  The question halts me, because how could I ever know? And it’s too late. How can I craft a mother for myself out of the faulty memories of others?

  “If only I knew.”

  He nods his head, just once, as though he hasn’t only heard what I’ve said, but he’s felt it.

  “You lost her early in life. It’s hard to know things about her. Things like her hopes and dreams. Isn’t it?” He speaks without pity; when he speaks, it’s just fact. The urge to slap Rabbi Morrey evaporates.

  “I did lose her early.”

  Silence sits between us, an easy, sad stillness. But despite my sadness, there is momentary peace in having shared a truth aloud.

  The rabbi sips his coffee and then says, “She must’ve been in eighth grade when she sang a song she’d written at the Hebrew school talent show. It was the first time she’d ever performed. But I’ll never forget how your mother surprised me that evening.” He laughs. “I was nervous for her. Performing didn’t strike me as something she’d be particularly good at. That was my lesson, though. Vivian was my reminder that people are never exactly as they seem, or as we perceive.”

  I close my eyes, trying to see my mom as an eighth grader, singing and playing the guitar.

  “The lyrics had something to do with a bird taking flight. And I remember her voice sounded just like that. Free. She became the bird of which she sang in those few minutes. And she was no small bird. Your mother was flying with a six-foot wingspan.”

  The two pictures intermingle in my head. One is a hawk, soaring over mountains, relishing the expanse of dusky sky. Another is my mother, singing and playing. And she’s joyous in both pictures.

  The tears come of their own accord, wetting my face and hands as I wipe them away. Without preamble, my tears turn into an unrestrained sob. I try to control it, but I can’t. My body needs to weep. My soul needs to weep. And so I do, because I have no other choice. I’m not sure how much time passes. Five minutes? An hour?

  Rabbi Morrey is not repulsed by this display of unrestrained feeling. Instead, he takes the napkin from under his coffee and hands it to me. Then he leans back in his chair and sips his coffee without staring at me or touching me. Without trying to make my reaction go away or become something else.

  “I hope that’s all true,” I finally manage to say.

  The rabbi leans into our table. “Of course it’s true. I was there. I might be the only person in the room who saw her as she was—a flying bird. But see her I did.”

  I think about how the rabbi’s story is just one in a collection of others’ memories, small pieces of my mom stitched together in me. I may forever picture my mother as a hawk because I just can’t remember how she looked as a person. But seeing her that way, as a bird soaring in the sky, feels like the closest truth I’ve known about her since she was here.

  “Are all rabbis this . . . deep?”

  He laughs. “Only the good ones.”

  When we part ways, I find myself wondering if I’ll see Rabbi Morrey again. I don’t know for sure, but it’s comforting to know the door is open, a thin piece of thread connecting me to my mom.

  Maggie, but really Me

  I see thin girls everywhere. It’s in the way they wear their jeans. What is it about autumn and a new pair of blue jeans? I just can’t get my bottom into a pair. Or my thighs. The jeans are either too tight in the thighs—as in, I can’t pull them up over my butt and thighs—or the waist gapes open at the back, revealing my butt crack. I’m in high school. It’s just not practical to have plumber’s ass each time I lean over to pick up my backpack or sit down in a chair. I can’t think of a time in life when plumber’s ass would be acceptable, except maybe if I was a dancer in a Jay Z video.

  Maggie is wearing a pair of jeans today. They’re slightly worn in the knee and faded in the butt and thigh. I know it’s stupid, but I keep wondering, if I looked like her in a pair of jeans would Tate want me instead? But I’m sure she has substance. I don’t think Tate is shallow enough to be with her just because he thinks she’s beautiful.

  Actually, I’m not sure she has substance. Not my kind of substance anyway. What do I even know about Maggie? She loves to sing. She’s a soprano. Her breath, her pitch, vibrato, everything is perfect. If her cupcake perfume could sing, it would sound like Maggie. Silky, vanilla, t
hin Maggie.

  I don’t hate her. Not really. It’s not her fault I’m like this and she’s like that. I wish I could be like this and wear jeans. Without the gaping waist or bulging thighs.

  Maggie smiles and winks at me as she passes back today’s music.

  I hate her.

  Jon

  We sit side by side in the car, me and Jon. I’m driving. He’s looking at the window, tracing designs into the fog. He seems mopey, which is unusual for him after lacrosse practice.

  “You made the team, right?” I say.

  “Yeah, of course I did.”

  “Bitchy. Jeez.”

  “Sorry,” he says. “I made it, but the coach put me on midfield. I worked so hard last season proving that I’m an attacker. It just sucks. And the guys he put up front aren’t that much better than me.”

  Jon has always been the athlete in the family. Not that I didn’t try to keep up. When we were kids, I did all the same sports. The older we got, the more I noticed that he was better—he threw the ball farther, ran faster, jumped higher. And in middle school my body softened with the curves of womanhood, while he stayed thin with sinewy muscles. But I was never bad. The one sport I had on him was swimming. He didn’t like the water in his ears, the chlorine in his eyes, the lick of cold water on his skin.

  For me, being in the water, swimming, was worth the cold and whatever happened to my ears or eyes. It meant momentary weightlessness and muting the rest of the world. It meant feeling the water rush off my face as I turned my head to breathe. The forced rhythm of breathing and not breathing, of pushing my body forward when all it wanted to do was cave because my lungs were burning, my muscles aching. Swimming felt like answering a question my soul’s always had.

  I tried out for the swim team my freshman year. Everyone said it was easy to get on the team. Junior varsity was open to everyone. The swim coach was passionate about making swimming “accessible.”

  We had to wear the team suits for practice, and I hated the way mine rode up on my thighs. I had to shave in places I’d never shaved. The warm-up was five hundred meters of freestyle. I was the slowest on the team, and the coach kept calling me out. Come on, Aden, what’s the holdup? The more he yelled at me, the tighter my bathing suit felt around my midsection, pinching my hips. I hated every minute of that tryout. It sucked the life out of the sacred experience for me that was swimming.

  I never checked to see if my name was on the JV roster. I couldn’t go back. And I was busy with schoolwork—I didn’t have time to find another outlet for swimming. I quit.

  Jon exhales loudly, as though it pains him to say, “Dad wanted me to play forward.”

  Oh, that. I forget about my jealousy and snap into mom mode because someone has to.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I get it. You worked so hard for an attacker spot. I wish you’d gotten it. But don’t worry about Dad.”

  Jon’s face contorts. “Yeah, right. Don’t worry about Dad. Don’t worry about the scholarship, right?”

  I don’t answer him. I’m looking seriously at Brandeis, a private school back East, so maybe I do need him to worry about the scholarship so Dad can afford tuition.

  Jon leans back in his seat and folds his arms over his chest.

  Tate, Me, Marissa

  It’s Friday night, and Marissa and I are in my room, getting ready to watch an acoustic show at Ike’s. It’s not like open mic night, where anybody can play. The people who play acoustic shows get paid. It’s a professional gig. One of these days I’m going to ask the owner to hire me. I just need to get up the nerve.

  I love Ike’s at night. The way it smells—espresso bean mixed with the must of books. I love the overstocked bookshelves and the eclectic art cluttering the walls. The way the dim light softens everything around the edges. We always see people we know there, but something about being at Ike’s at night tears down the social barriers. I have full-on conversations with kids I’d never even say hi to in the hall at school. Or maybe they wouldn’t say hi to me. High school is such bullshit.

  The radio is cranked a few notches louder than normal. We have makeup, magazines, and clothes strewn over the bed.

  “Maybe you’d fit this shirt,” she says holding up a green sequined tank top.

  “Maybe it’d fit my left boob,” I say, thinking I’d never wear sequins to Ike’s.

  “Shut up, Ade. Try it on.”

  “No, thanks.”

  I ignore the shirt and lean into my closet, hopeless. How can it be so full of clothes and I have nothing to wear? There’s nothing in there that will make me skinnier, prettier, more desirable.

  “Okay, but I’m saying it’s stretchy,” Marissa says.

  “Thanks.”

  “I wore it yesterday with a cardigan. Lance seemed to like it.”

  “I imagine he did.”

  I’m thinking that’s the end of the Mr. Danson (Lance) conversation when Marissa says, “Every time he touches me, I swear I feel an electric shock run through my whole body. That must be chemistry, right?”

  “Could be. I mean, I’m sure it is.”

  I’m a little more nauseous, the feeling rising like bile in the back of my throat, every time we talk about Mr. Danson. I thought Marissa’s feelings would pass. But the more she talks about him, the more real it seems.

  “So you stayed after school yesterday?” I say.

  “I did.”

  Her response is frighteningly definitive. I want to say more, that I’m worried, but I’m afraid that saying this truth will push Marissa away. And no part of me wants Marissa far away.

  Now she’s all closed-lipped, when she’s the one who brought the whole Danson thing into the conversation.

  “Working on your sexay?”

  She laughs.

  “Something like that,” she says. “Do you think I should?”

  “Do I think you should what?”

  “Have sex with him?”

  “As though that’s a totally feasible option.” Maybe Danson is flirting with Marissa. But flirting to sex feels like a leap. He’s our teacher.

  “Let’s pretend it is,” Marissa says without breaking eye contact.

  “And you want my honest answer?”

  “Minus the bitchy,” she says. Minus the bitchy. She doesn’t want the truth.

  “It might be sexy. But then what?”

  “I don’t know. I really care about him, Ade. He sees me as more than just . . .” She pauses, finishing with “a hot girl.”

  There’s the crux of it. This whole thing about being understood by an older man for Marissa. With Danson she’s not invisible like she is to her dad and every other guy her mom has dated since. I know what it is to need to be seen. Even if it’s by the wrong person. Because as much as I want to be with Tate, maybe he’s the wrong one. If only because he has a girlfriend.

  “You know he’s married with a kid, right?”

  “I do,” she says.

  “So you really want to be that person?”

  She looks at me, big eyes, long, mascaraed lashes. I’m already flinching, waiting for her claws to come out. Instead she says, “I’ve been her since the day I was born.” And in her tone there’s a note of sad resignation.

  My ringtone breaks the silence. It’s a lewd hip-hop song, the radio version—because it’s so not me, it’s funny. I dive onto my bed and reach for the phone as Marissa holds it over her head.

  “Lover boy,” she says.

  I wrestle the phone away from her and swipe the screen to answer.

  “What are you doing?” Tate says.

  “Getting ready.”

  “For what?” he says.

  “A hot night at Ike’s. Want to come?”

  “I do. See you there.”

  “Forty-five minutes.”

  “I need a ride home.”

  “You got it,” I say.

  My beam is involuntary.

  Marissa raises her eyebrows. “We’re taking him home?”

  “What, is ultra
sonic hearing your new superpower? You better be cool tonight,” I say.

  She laughs. “Who me? I’d never blow your cover.”

  I know she doesn’t mean anything by it, but the way she says cover makes me feel like some sixth-grader with a secret crush. This thing with Tate, though—it’s not like that. I didn’t decide it. It decided me.

  I glance at myself in the full-length mirror, and for a minute I think I look pretty. There’s that word. Pretty. My long hair waves down my back in several thick curls, and the blue tunic I finally chose cinches a little at the waist.

  “You look beautiful,” Marissa says, putting her arm around me.

  With Marissa standing next to me in the frame of my mirror, I lose the feeling, because I don’t look like her, and I have it in my head that to be pretty you have to look like Marissa—be thin like her, curvy in all the right places. Marissa’s hair looks tousled—like she just came from a sexy photo shoot at the beach. Her body thinner than mine. Her lips fuller. I envy the way she looks like an airbrushed model.

  “I’m sure Tate will think you look beautiful, too,” she says. And she means it.

  ***

  Marissa and I sit at Ike’s together. Her untouched black coffee sits next to my half-gone mocha.

  I see Tate first. The tight brown sweater he’s wearing takes the blue out of his eyes—they’re totally gray. His hair is still wet from a shower. My mind drifts briefly to an image of Tate in the shower, and then we’re making out in the shower, and I have to pull it together.

  Tate ruffles my hair when he gets to our table. I don’t like it. It’s brotherly, and there’s not very much brotherly in my feelings for Tate.

  “Tate,” Marissa says. “We saved you a seat.” She gestures to the chair next to me as though he’s some kind of king.

  He gives her a slight bow and turns his attention to me.

  They’ve only met a few times, but there’s already something easy and familiar between Tate and Marissa. I don’t mind it, though. Maybe it’s because I’m what they have in common.