THE MAN ON the stairs did not look like he’d listened to classic rock while wearing an old concert T-shirt. He wore dress pants and a button-down shirt beneath a long black coat, along with a blatant expression of parental dismay. He bore such an unmistakable resemblance to Ben that even if he hadn’t introduced him, Amanda would’ve guessed it was his dad. Instinctively, she stepped forward to offer her hand.
“He won’t shake it,” Ben said in a low voice.
She’d heard of Orthodox men and women who didn’t shake hands with the opposite gender, but this was the first time she’d experienced it. She and Ben’s dad eyed each other, assessing, as she withdrew her offered hand. She tried a smile. It wasn’t returned.
“I came to talk to you, and you weren’t home,” Ben’s father said, dismissing her. “I heard noise. And this is how I find you?”
Ben glanced at her. “Let’s go into my place.”
“Why? Are you ashamed of your behavior?”
“No,” Ben said sharply. “I’m afraid I might be ashamed of yours.”
Amanda winced at the sight of Mr. Schneider’s expression—Ben might as well have reached out to slap him. The older man narrowed his eyes, then sighed, looking so sad it hurt Amanda’s heart. He put his hand on the railing and shook his head.
“I didn’t come here to fight with you, Benyamin.”
“No? Then why did you come here?”
Ben’s father shrugged. “To see if I couldn’t convince you to come home.”
“I don’t want to come home.”
“I’ll just . . . umm . . . Ben, I’ll see you later?” She hadn’t meant for it to be a question, but there didn’t seem to be any other way to phrase it.
“Yeah, sure.” Without a look back at her, Ben pushed past his father on the stairs and headed down, leaving the older man to stare at Amanda.
She gave him a steady look in return, refusing to look embarrassed. “Mr. Schneider, we’re having a Chanukah party with latkes, if you’d like to come in.”
“You’re Jewish?”
“That’s what your son asked me the first time we met, and he sounded just as surprised.” She couldn’t stop herself from sounding the tiniest bit sarcastic. “But yeah. I am. My latkes are kosher, too, if you want to know.”
“You keep kosher?”
“I’m a vegetarian,” she said, aware she sounded defensive, and not sure why she cared the least little bit about what this guy thought. Other than he was Ben’s father, and she liked Ben a whole lot. “So yes. By default, right?”
“I should go see my son.”
“I guess you should.” Amanda’s smile felt brittle, but she forced it, anyway. She was at her door when his voice called her to turn around.
“I only want what’s best for him, you know,” Ben’s dad said. “If you’re a good friend to him, you’d want the same.”
She didn’t have an answer for that, so they stared at each other a moment longer before Mr. Schneider went down the stairs.
THEY’D ARGUED FOR hours, and now sat across from each other at the battered dining room table Ben had bought from a thrift store. None of the chairs matched. The one his father sat on had one leg a bit shorter than the other, enough to make it rock with every movement.
“We can make it all work all right,” his father said now. “That girl, she’s going to marry your friend.”
Ben rubbed his temples, then got out of the chair to pace. Debating. Lying to his father had been one of the worst things he’d ever done, even if his reasons had felt right at the time. “I know.”
“Who told you?”
Ben turned to face him. “I knew before I left.”
Understanding dawned on his father’s face. More disappointment. Ben thought he should be used to seeing it by now but knew he’d never be.
“Ah.”
That was it. Just Ah? No diatribe, no lecture, no guilt trip?
“You could still come home, son.” His father sounded weary. Worse, he looked . . . old. “We want you to, no matter what happened with Galya and Levi.”
“It’s more than that.”
His father pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes for a moment before looking at Ben again. “Benyamin, I know you struggle with a lot of things. You question. You study. You argue against the rules. You’re a lot like I was, when I was your age . . .”
“When you were my age, Abba, you were listening to hard rock and wearing jeans and eating cheeseburgers,” Ben answered calmly. “You went to the prom.”
“And when I got older, I realized all those things had done nothing to lead me toward a religious life.”
Ben shrugged, knowing that no matter what he said, his father was probably never going to understand. “I think everything that ever happened to you is what leads you toward your life, religious and everything else.”
“Are you saying that eating treif is going to somehow make you a better person?” His father’s voice rose, then quieted with an obvious, concerted effort.
Ben shook his head. “No. But I don’t know that being unable to flick a light switch on Shabbat is really going to keep me away from Ha-Shem. I don’t think that finding the person I want to marry and raise children with means that she is responsible for preparing a huge feast every Sabbath, but has to do it without making her life easier by using the microwave. I think it’s about being together with the people you love and spending time in contemplation and prayer, not how strict you are about using electricity.”
His father got up to pace. “You know why we set those restrictions—”
“Yeah, the fence around the Torah, to keep someone from accidentally breaking one of the commandments. I get it, but you know what, I guess I believe that if we’re supposed to think and study and argue to really understand what Ha-Shem wants from us, it’s not necessary to add on all those other things just in case we get it wrong. For someone else to have decided what I’m capable of doing or not.”
His father turned, looking defeated, shoulders slumped. “I don’t want to see you fall away, Benyamin.”
“I’m trying to figure out where I fit. That’s all. You can’t decide for me. Your parents didn’t decide for you,” Ben pointed out. “You chose. Like I’m trying to choose.”
“I moved up the ladder. You’re trying to jump off it.”
Ben didn’t answer that. His father gave a heavy sigh and gripped the back of the chair as though he needed it to hold him up. He shook his head.
“I don’t want to work for you, Abba. I’m sorry. And I don’t want to come home, not yet.”
“Is it because of her? That woman?”
Ben shook his head. “No.”
“But you like her.”
“I do like her. A lot,” Ben said.
His father sighed again, then straightened. He squared his shoulders. “There’s nothing I can say to make you change your mind?”
“No.”
“You’re breaking your mother’s heart. I understand if you hate me, I’ve been hard on you. But your mother deserves better than this. Where did we go wrong?”
That was it, the last straw. “Enough. Okay? Just . . . enough. You don’t have to like my choices. Honestly, I don’t like all of them, either. But I’m trying to figure out where I fit, and that’s my journey. Not yours. If you want to see where a road leads,” Ben said after a moment, “you need to start walking it. And no matter what road I’m on, you should be able to love me anyway.”
“I could never not love you.” His father looked startled. “How could you even think that?”
“Then let me make my mistakes, whatever they are!” Ben shouted so loud his dad took a step back.
They stared at each other, both breathing hard. Both angry. Then his father nodded.
“You can stay here, if you want,” Ben said after a moment. “You could come upstairs to the party. You could meet Amanda for real. You could spend some time with me, just . . . we could just spend some time together.”
“No. I’m staying with Reuben Silver’s son-in-law and daughter. They’re shomer Shabbos. I’ll be with them until Sunday, and then I have a train home. I won’t ask you to be on it with me. But . . . Benyamin, the offer will always be there.”
After that, they didn’t have much to say. Ben thought about offering his hand to his father at the door, but didn’t. His father hesitated, looking as though he might say something, but then to Ben’s shock, he pulled him close for a hug.
“You can always come home. You know that. And if you don’t want to come home, at least call us once in a while to let us know you’re all right, okay? We’re your family. We love you. Whatever road you’re on.”
Ben nodded, not trusting his voice. When he closed the door behind his father, he leaned against it, eyes closed, thinking very hard. Still uncertain about which path he wanted to take, only that he knew he was still trying to figure it out.