“I know. But why didn’t they go to New York instead? We would have let them in. They could have had their synagogues here, and so forth, and we could have had some kind of normal relationship with the Arabs.”
“But the Holocaust happened in Europe, which was supposed to be civilized. When you lose half your world population to genocide, you stop trusting anybody to protect you except yourself.”
Joey was uncomfortably aware that he was displaying attitudes more his parents’ than his own, and that he was therefore about to lose an argument he didn’t even care about winning. “Fine,” he persisted nonetheless, “but why does that have to be
“Because it’s our business to support democracy and free markets wherever they are,” Jonathan said. “That’s the problem in Saudi Arabia—too many angry people with no economic prospects. That’s how come bin Laden can recruit there. I totally agree with you about the Palestinians. That’s just a giant fucking breeding ground for terrorists. That’s why we have to try to bring freedom to all the Arab countries. But you don’t start doing that by selling out the one working democracy in the entire region.”
Joey admired Jonathan not only for his coolness but for having the confidence not to pretend to be stupid in order to maintain it. He managed the difficult trick of making it seem cool to be smart. “Hey,” Joey said, to change the subject, “am I still invited to Thanksgiving?”
“Invited? You’re doubly invited now. My family isn’t the self-hating kind of Jewish. My parents really, really dig Jews. They will roll out the red carpet for you.”
The following afternoon, alone in their room, and oppressed by not yet having made the promised call to Connie about seeing a doctor, Joey found himself opening Jonathan’s computer and searching for pictures of his sister, Jenna. He didn’t consider it snooping if he went straight to family photos that Jonathan had already shown him anyway. His roommate’s excitement about his Jewishness seemed to presage a similarly warm reception on Jenna’s part, and he copied the two most fetching pictures of her onto his own hard drive, altering the file extensions to make them unfindable by anyone but him, so that he could picture some concrete alternative to Connie before he made the dreaded call to her.
The female scene at school had not proved satisfactory thus far. Compared to Connie, the really attractive girls he’d met in Virginia all seemed to have been sprayed with Teflon, encased in suspicion of his motives. Even the prettiest ones wore too much makeup and overly formal clothes and dressed for Cavaliers games as if they were the Kentucky Derby. It was true that certain second-tier girls, at parties where they’d drunk too much, had given him to understand he was a boy to whom hookups were available. But for whatever reason, whether because he was a wuss or because he hated shouting over music or because he thought too highly of himself or because he was unable to ignore how stupid and annoying too much alcohol made a girl, he’d formed an early prejudice against these parties and their hookups and decided that he much preferred hanging out with other guys.
He sat holding his phone for a long time, for maybe half an hour, while the sky in the windows grayed toward rain. He waited for so long and in such a stupor of reluctance that it was almost like Zen archery when his thumb, of its own accord, hit the speed-dial for Connie’s number and the ringing dragged him forward into action.
“Hey!” she answered in a cheerful ordinary voice, a voice he realized he’d been missing. “Where are you?”
“I’m in my room.”
“What’s it doing there?”
“I don’t know. It’s kind of gray.”
“God, it was
“Yeah, listen,” he said. “Are you OK?”
“Me?” She seemed surprised by the question. “Yes. I miss you every minute of the day, but I’m getting used to that.”
“I’m sorry I went so long without calling.”
“That’s OK. I love talking to you, but I understand why we need to be more disciplined. I was just working on my Inver Hills application. I also signed up to take the SAT in December, like you suggested.”
“Did I suggest that?”
“If I’m going to go to real school in the fall, like you said, it’s what I need to do. I bought a book on how to study for it. I’m going to study three hours every day.”
“So you’re really OK.”
“Yes! How are you?”
Joey struggled to reconcile Carol’s account of Connie with how clear and collected she was sounding. “I talked to your mom last night,” he said.
“I know. She told me.”
“She said she’s pregnant?”
“Yes, a blessed event is coming our way. I think it’s going to be twins.”
“Really? Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s just my sense. That it’s going to be especially horrible in some way.”
“The whole conversation was actually pretty weird.”
“She’s been spoken to now,” Connie said. “She won’t be calling you again. If she does, let me know, and I’ll make it stop.”
“She said you were very depressed,” Joey blurted out.
