Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

“Oh, my God,” she says. “I’m so fucking high. Like instantly. Like, like,” and then she starts laughing. “Like, Mike,” she says. “Like, kike,” she says, turning completely serious. “Oh, my God, I’m really messed up.”

“We should have warned you,” Shoshana says.

As she says this, I’m holding my first hit in, and already trying to fight off the paranoia that comes rushing behind that statement.

“Warned us what?” I say, my voice high, and the smoke still sweet in my nose.

“This isn’t your father’s marijuana,” Mark says. “The THC levels. One hit of this new hydroponic stuff, it’s like if maybe you smoked a pound of the stuff we had when we were kids.”

“I feel it,” I say. And I do. I sit down with Deb on the floor and take her hands. I feel nice. Though I’m not sure if I thought that or said it, so I try it again, making sure it’s out loud. “I feel nice,” I say.

“I found the pot in the laundry hamper,” Deb says. “Leave it to a teenage boy to think that’s the best place to hide something. His clean clothes show up folded in his room, and it never occurs to him that someone empties that hamper. To him, it’s the loneliest, most forgotten space in the world. Point is I found an Altoids tin at the bottom, stuffed full.” Deb gives my hands a squeeze. “Are we good now?”

“We’re good,” I say. And it feels like we’re a team again, like it’s us against them. Because Deb says, “Are you sure you guys are allowed to smoke pot that comes out of a tin that held non-kosher candy? I really don’t know if that’s okay.” And it’s just exactly the kind of thing I’m thinking.

“First of all, we’re not eating it. We’re smoking it,” Shoshana says. “And even so, it’s cold contact, so it’s probably all right either way.”

“‘Cold contact’?” I say.

“It’s a thing,” Shoshana says. “Just forget about it and get up off the floor. Chop-chop.” And they each offer us a hand and get us standing. “Come, sit back at the table,” Shoshana says.

“I’ll tell you,” Mark says. “That’s got to be the number-one most annoying thing about being Hasidic in the outside world. Worse than the rude stuff that gets said is the constant policing by civilians. Everywhere we go, people are checking on us. Ready to make some sort of liturgical citizen’s arrest.”

“Strangers!” Shoshana says. “Just the other day, on the way in from the airport. Yuri pulled into a McDonald’s to pee, and some guy in a trucker hat came up to him as he went in and said, ‘You allowed to go in there, brother?’ Just like that.”

“Not true!” Deb says.

“It’s not that I don’t see the fun in that,” Mark says. “The allure. You know, we’ve got Mormons in Jerusalem. They’ve got a base there. A seminary. The rule is — the deal with the government — they can have their place, but they can’t do outreach. No proselytizing. Anyway, I do some business with one of their guys.”

“From Utah?” Deb says.

“From Idaho. His name is Jebediah, for real — do you believe it?”

“No, Yerucham and Shoshana,” I say. “Jebediah is a very strange name.” Mark rolls his eyes at that, handing me what’s left of the joint. Without even asking, he gets up and gets the tin and reaches into his wife’s purse for another tampon. And I’m a little less comfortable with this than with the white bread, with a guest coming into the house and smoking up all our son’s pot. Deb must be thinking something similar, as she says, “After this story, I’m going to text Trev and make sure he’s not coming back anytime soon.”

“So when Jeb’s at our house,” Mark says, “when he comes by to eat and pours himself a Coke, I do that same religious-police thing. I can’t resist. I say, ‘Hey, Jeb, you allowed to have that?’ People don’t mind breaking their own rules, but they’re real strict about someone else’s.”

“So are they allowed to have Coke?” Deb says.

“I don’t know,” Mark says. “All Jeb ever says back is ‘You’re thinking of coffee, and mind your own business, either way.’”

And then my Deb. She just can’t help herself. “You heard about the scandal? The Mormons going through the Holocaust list.”

“Like in Dead Souls ,” I say, explaining. “Like in the Gogol book, but real.”

“Do you think we read that?” Mark says. “As Hasidim, or before?”

“They took the records of the dead,” Deb says, “and they started running through them. They took these people who died as Jews and started converting them into Mormons. Converting the six million against their will.”

“And this is what keeps an American Jew up at night?” Mark says.

“What does that mean?” Deb says.

“It means—” Mark says.

But Shoshana interrupts him. “Don’t tell them what it means, Yuri. Just leave it unmeant.”

“We can handle it,” I say. “We are interested, even, in handling it.”

“Your son, he seems like a nice boy.”

“Do not talk about their son,” Shoshana says.

“Do not talk about our son,” Deb says. This time I reach across and lay a hand on her elbow.

“Talk,” I say.

“He does not,” Mark says, “seem Jewish to me.”

“How can you say that?” Deb says. “What is wrong with you?” But Deb’s upset draws less attention than my response. I’m laughing so hard that everyone turns toward me.

“What?” Mark says.

“Jewish to you?” I say. “The hat, the beard, the blocky shoes. A lot of pressure, I’d venture, to look Jewish to you. Like, say, maybe Ozzy Osbourne, or the guys from Kiss, like them telling Paul Simon, ‘You do not look like a musician to me.’”

“It is not about the outfit,” Mark says. “It’s about building life in a vacuum. Do you know what I saw on the drive over here? Supermarket, supermarket, adult bookstore, supermarket, supermarket, firing range.”

“Floridians do like their guns and porn,” I say. “And their supermarkets.”

“What I’m trying to say, whether you want to take it seriously or not, is that you can’t build Judaism only on the foundation of one terrible crime,” Mark says. “It’s about this obsession with the Holocaust as a necessary sign of identity. As your only educational tool. Because for the children there is no connection otherwise. Nothing Jewish that binds.”

“Wow, that’s offensive,” Deb says. “And closed-minded. There is such a thing as Jewish culture. One can live a culturally rich life.”

“Not if it’s supposed to be a Jewish life. Judaism is a religion. And with religion comes ritual. Culture is nothing. Culture is some construction of the modern world. It is not fixed; it is ever changing, and a weak way to bind generations. It’s like taking two pieces of metal, and instead of making a nice weld you hold them together with glue.”

“What does that even mean?” Deb says. “Practically.”

Mark raises a finger to make his point, to educate. “In Jerusalem we don’t need to busy ourselves with symbolic efforts to keep our memories in place. Because we live exactly as our parents lived before the war. And this serves us in all things, in our relationships too, in our marriages and parenting.”

“Are you saying your marriage is better than ours?” Deb says. “Really? Just because of the rules you live by?”

“I’m saying your husband would not have the long face, worried his wife is keeping secrets. And your son, he would not get into the business of smoking without first coming to you. Because the relationships, they are defined. They are clear.”

“Because they are welded together,” I say, “and not glued.”

“Yes,” he says. “And I bet Shoshana agrees.” But Shoshana is distracted. She is working carefully with an apple and a knife. She is making a little apple pipe, all the tampons gone.