Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

“Oh, my God,” Shoshana says. “My short-term memory may be gone from having all those children—”

“And from the smoking,” I say.

“And from that too. But I remember from when we were kids,” Shoshana says, turning to Deb. “You were always getting me to play games like that. To pick out spaces. And even worse, even darker—”

“Don’t,” Deb says.

“I know what you’re going to say,” I tell her, and I’m honestly excited. “The game, yes? She played that crazy game with you?”

“No,” Deb says. “Enough. Let it go.”

And Mark — who is utterly absorbed in studying kosher certifications, who is tearing through hundred-calorie snack packs and eating handfuls of roasted peanuts, and who has said nothing since we entered the pantry except “What’s a Fig Newman?”—he stops and says, “I want to play this game.”

“It’s not a game,” Deb says.

And I’m happy to hear her say that, as it’s just what I’ve been trying to get her to admit for years. That it’s not a game. That it’s dead serious, and a kind of preparation, and an active pathology that I prefer not to indulge.

“It’s the Anne Frank game,” Shoshana says. “Right?”

Seeing how upset my wife is, I do my best to defend her. I say, “No, it’s not a game. It’s just what we talk about when we talk about Anne Frank.”

“How do we play this non-game?” Mark says. “What do we do?”

“It’s the Righteous Gentile game,” Shoshana says.

“It’s Who Will Hide Me?” I say.

“In the event of a second Holocaust,” Deb says, giving in. “It’s a serious exploration, a thought experiment that we engage in.”

“That you play,” Shoshana says.

“That, in the event of an American Holocaust, we sometimes talk about which of our Christian friends would hide us.”

“I don’t get it,” Mark says.

“Of course you do,” Shoshana says. “It’s like this. If there was a Shoah, if it happened again — say we were in Jerusalem, and it’s 1941 and the Grand Mufti got his way, what would Jebediah do?”

“What could he do?” Mark says.

“He could hide us. He could risk his life and his family’s and everyone’s around him. That’s what the game is: would he — for real — would he do that for you?”

“He’d be good for that, a Mormon,” Mark says. “Forget this pantry. They have to keep a year of food stored in case of the Rapture, or something like that. Water too. A year of supplies. Or maybe it’s that they have sex through a sheet. No, wait. I think that’s supposed to be us.”

“All right,” Deb says. “Let’s not play. Really, let’s go back to the kitchen. I can order in from the glatt kosher place. We can eat outside, have a real dinner and not just junk.”

“No, no,” Mark says. “I’ll play. I’ll take it seriously.”

“So would the guy hide you?” I say.

“The kids too?” Mark says. “I’m supposed to pretend that in Jerusalem he’s got a hidden motel or something where he can put the twelve of us?”

“Yes,” Shoshana says. “In their seminary or something. Sure.”

Mark thinks about this for a long, long time. He eats Fig Newmans and considers, and you can tell that he’s taking it seriously — serious to the extreme.

“Yes,” Mark says, looking choked up. “Jeb would do that for us. He would risk it all.”

Shoshana nods. “Now you go,” she says to us. “You take a turn.”

“But we don’t know any of the same people anymore,” Deb says. “We usually just talk about the neighbors.”

“Our across-the-street neighbors,” I tell them. “They’re the perfect example. Because the husband, Mitch, he would hide us. I know it. He’d lay down his life for what’s right. But that wife of his.”

“Yes,” Deb says. “Mitch would hide us, but Gloria, she’d buckle. When he was at work one day, she’d turn us in.”

“You could play against yourselves,” Shoshana says. “What if one of you wasn’t Jewish? Would you hide the other?”

“I’ll do it,” I say. “I’ll be the Gentile, because I could pass best. A grown woman with an ankle-length denim skirt in her closet — they’d catch you in a flash.”

“Fine,” Deb says. And I stand up straight, put my shoulders back, like maybe I’m in a lineup. I stand there with my chin raised so my wife can study me. So she can decide if her husband really has what it takes. Would I have the strength, would I care enough — and it is not a light question, not a throwaway question — to risk my life to save her and our son?

Deb stares, and Deb smiles, and gives me a little push to my chest. “Of course he would,” Deb says. She takes the half stride that’s between us and gives me a tight hug that she doesn’t release. “Now you,” Deb says. “You and Yuri go.”

“How does that even make sense?” Mark says. “Even for imagining.”

“Sh-h-h,” Shoshana says. “Just stand over there and be a good Gentile while I look.”

“But if I weren’t Jewish I wouldn’t be me.”

“That’s for sure,” I say.

“He agrees,” Mark says. “We wouldn’t even be married. We wouldn’t have kids.”

“Of course you can imagine it,” Shoshana says. “Look,” she says, and goes over and closes the pantry door. “Here we are, caught in South Florida for the second Holocaust. You’re not Jewish, and you’ve got the three of us hiding in your pantry.”

“But look at me!” he says.

“I’ve got a fix,” I say. “You’re a background singer for ZZ Top. You know that band?”

Deb lets go of me so she can give my arm a slap.

“Really,” Shoshana says. “Look at the three of us like it’s your house and we’re your charges, locked up in this room.”

“And what’re you going to do while I do that?” Mark says.

“I’m going to look at you looking at us. I’m going to imagine.”

“Okay,” he says. “ Nu , get to it. I will stand, you imagine.”

And that’s what we do, the four of us. We stand there playing our roles, and we really get into it. I can see Deb seeing him, and him seeing us, and Shoshana just staring at her husband.

We stand there so long I can’t tell how much time has passed, though the light changes ever so slightly — the sun outside again dimming — in the crack under the pantry door.

“So would I hide you?” he says. And for the first time that day he reaches out, as my Deb would, and puts his hand to his wife’s hand. “Would I, Shoshi?”

And you can tell that Shoshana is thinking of her kids, though that’s not part of the scenario. You can tell that she’s changed part of the imagining. And she says, after a pause, yes, but she’s not laughing. She says yes, but to him it sounds as it does to us, so that he is now asking and asking. But wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t I hide you? Even if it was life and death — if it would spare you, and they’d kill me alone for doing it? Wouldn’t I?

Shoshana pulls back her hand.

She does not say it. And he does not say it. And of the four of us no one will say what cannot be said — that this wife believes her husband would not hide her. What to do? What will come of it? And so we stand like that, the four of us trapped in that pantry. Afraid to open the door and let out what we’ve locked inside.

JULIE OTSUKA was born in 1962 and raised in California. She studied art at Yale and began a career as a painter before writing fiction. She received her MFA from Columbia.

Her first novel, When the Emperor Was Divine , tells the story of the internment of a Japanese American family. She is also the author of The Buddha in the Attic .