Adam Levin - The Instructions

“No.”

Would it be dishonest, if they did ask, to tell them you’ve been with Samuel discussing Judaism?

“In a certain light: no. That is one of the things I’ve been doing, discussing Judaism with Samuel. However, that account would not exactly be forthcoming.”

Who says you always have to be forthcoming? I said.

Emmanuel squinted = “This sounds demagogic.”

I said, ‘Always’ as in ‘at all times.’ You weren’t originally gonna tell me you were jealous about Eliyahu, right?

“That’s true, but then I did tell you.”

Because the time was right, I said.

“Okay,” he said. “But when will the time be right to tell my parents we’re friends again?”

Not before I deliver my scripture, I said.

“So you’ll still deliver it.”

Yes.

“When?”

After I write it, I said.

“I thought you already wrote it.”

So did I, I said. But listen — are you still troubled?

“Not about laying low,” he said.

I said, Good enough. I said, Go home.

A genius of bundling, a worried mother’s wildest dream, Emmanuel covered his face to the eyes with his scarf like a ninja. Then he jumped from the top of our five-step back stoop, exploding a half-frozen puddle.

Up in my room, I read ten of the scholars’ emails, each equally and sufficiently representative of the rest (I’ve since examined all 365). Some of the emails mentioned Emmanuel’s email — the one where he told them that he and the other three would contact me in order to find out for everyone if contacting me was transgressive. The authors of these emails explained that despite their initial willingness to do nothing til after Emmanuel reported on my ruling, they’d since reasoned that contact , at least as it seemed to be defined by my “New Scripture” email, was a two-way street, and that therefore to write to me was not, in itself, a form of contact —not unless I chose to read what they’d written — and that if contacting me did turn out to be transgressive, they reasoned, then I wouldn’t read what they’d written, for I was the last teacher in the world who’d ever lead them to transgression, and so there was no danger in writing to me. Other emails didn’t mention Emmanuel’s. Apart from that, any variance among them was little more than grammatical. They were all signed “your student,” they all wished a speedy recovery for my father, they all contained blessings on “this red-haired girl you love,” and every single one requested further instructions.

I was in the middle of the tenth when my parents came home. I didn’t click any more envelope icons, but I didn’t rush to the door either. I didn’t want the conversation I’d have with my father to be compromised by his good manners — Flowers was still reading in our living room, waiting to give them the babysitting report.

I shut off my light and looked out the window, and a couple minutes later the Volvo tweeted. Flowers got in and I headed for the stairway.

Distracted by Emmanuel’s close reading of my teachings, then tempted by my overloading inbox, I hadn’t, as I’d planned to, bolstered myself with focused recollections of the courthouse-steps imagery, but it turned out that would’ve been unnecessary anyway.

Halfway down the stairs, I could hear them in the kitchen; my father saying I was probably asleep, my mother that she’d promised to wake me if I was. The scrape of metal against flint. I stealthed to where the wall became banister, leaned long and downward and watched them through the bars.

My father’s damaged leg lay across two chairs, swollen and braced in elastic. My mother reached over the table, stole the cigarette from his lips.

He reached for the pack in his jacket.

“Do not have conniptions,” she told him. “I only wanted one puff.”

“No, have it,” he said. He shook out a fresh one.

“You say this like you are being generous, but in fact—”

“Not now, baby,” he said.

“‘Not. Now. Baby,’” she said. “Should I feel offended or charmed? It is hard to say, no?” She dragged and the cigarette crackled, but she kept it there in her mouthcorner. “On the first hand, it is a kind of brush-off: he does not want to hear the affectionate small jab I was about to make regarding his mood. On the second hand, he calls me ‘baby’ which is sweet, but on the third hand, it is precisely because ‘baby’ is sweet and he is using it to brush me off that saying to me ‘baby’ is a little condescending. Do I decide that he is sweet for painting with honey the brushoff, or cruel for pretending to me that a brush-off is honey?”

Here, a chunk of ash fell off the end of her cigarette, exploding on impact with the placemat. She might have paused because she noticed or she might have noticed because she paused. It was impossible to tell, but now she addressed herself to the ashes, and my father didn’t notice — he just kept looking at his lap.

“Let us assume that I truly love him, this Judah Maccabee, and that I call it honey on a brush-off. Say that I can even empathize with his need to exercise a brush-off, that I understand he has had a trying day and needs to enjoy an uninterrupted cigarette in its entirety before he can feel human again. The question then becomes: How do I get across to him that despite all of that, he is not the only one who has had a trying day, that I have also had a trying day, and that if I empathize it is at least partly because I need someone to do the same for me? How do I get it across?”

She blew the ashes into the cup of her hand.

“Do I drop the lit cigarette down the back of his shirt and then become alarmed? Do I just thank him for the cigarette and continue to smoke it while I fetch him an icepack from the freezer?” She was at the freezer now, the icepack in her hand; noticing its softness, she gave it dirty looks. “Do I attempt to return the lit cigarette to his lips? Maybe continue to soliloquize until he reacts, until he tells me how sexy my accent still is to him, or until he tells me in a prideful, almost fatherly way how little my accent inflects my speech anymore? Maybe he will pay me the compliment I want to hear but he will mean the opposite and I will know it. Maybe it is only a sentimental kind of love we have now, a warm thing, but not fiery. Maybe he knows I want him to tell me how sexy my accent still is and he tells me, or maybe he knows and so he tells me the opposite, to tease me, for teasing is more youthful, less porch-swinging, a more convincing denial. Teasing is fierier.” She set the icepack on his knee, said, “Is this a word? Fierier? It should be. That is not the point. What is the point? Maybe it is all a put-on, is the point. This teasing. Maybe this teasing is all a put-on, a clever double-feign arranged, however lovingly, to confirm that he—”

“This icepack isn’t very cold,” said my father. I couldn’t see his face.

“He broods!” she said, “and she continues to speak. What does this make her? What else but a twit? Is not a twit one who twitters? And what is it called in the American language when a foreign wife ceaselessly banters into the ear of a husband who is brooding cross-armed with a burning cigarette in his fingers? What is it called, Judah? What, if not twittering?”

“Baby, come—”

She kissed him on the cheek and he dropped his cigarette and grabbed her wrist and she giggled a syllable.

They started making out.

All the other times I’d come across them making out in the kitchen, I’d snuck away quietly. This time I smacked the wall, because who were they trying to kid?