“Today, I am a man.”
Right then I knew that something was seriously wrong—I mean seriously wrong—with Eric Weinberg. Everyone in the audience knew. You couldn’t miss it.
It wasn’t just the anxious, weebly quaver of his voice, the nasal soprano of which didn’t do much to support Eric’s assertion of manhood. His skinny face, which was pale and pasty even in midsummer, had suddenly gone several notches whiter—beyond white, really, achieving a sort of ghostly translucence, and all the way from the seventh row of Temple Israel I could see the greasy sheen of sweat on his beaky nose and the trembling of his birdlike hands.
Even Rabbi Abramovitz—a man who must have witnessed the very worst of tragic bar and bat mitzvah flameouts—looked concerned. This was more than a standard attack of the jitters.
The rabbi had a famously rebellious left eyeball that tended to move and blink independently of the right one, which explains how an otherwise nice man can end up with a nickname like the Lizard. Now, though, his rebel eye was taking a break from its standard Pong-like wanderings to cooperate with its rival. Both pupils were riveted on Eric, who had started to sway gently behind the podium.
“Oh, shit!” muttered my older brother, Josh, next to me. Then he grunted, probably from an elbow in the ribs from our mom.
I glanced at Josh. His muscly jaw was clenched, lips pressed together. He was trying not to laugh. This was funny to him. My friend Eric—well, maybe not friend, but at the least, ally of convenience in a hostile universe—was going to pieces up there, and Josh was staring at the back of the pew in front of us, eyes bugging out as he tried to maintain his composure.
On the stage, Eric was doing his best to continue, his reedy little voice coming from what seemed like very far away. I couldn’t even look at him. He was giving off palpable waves of intensely contagious Panic, and my Panic immune system is extremely weak. My own skin was clammy. I pinched my thigh, hard, to distract myself from the terror bubbling and churning inside me.
I leaned forward to see past Josh’s bulk, vainly hoping for some reassuring guidance from my parents. My mom didn’t notice me. Her attention was focused on the disaster unfolding on the stage. She was employing one of her superpowers, the Smile: a fixed expression as placid and pleasant and unperturbed as a mirrored pond, capable of hiding even the most monstrous emotions.
Next to her was my nine-old-sister, Lisa. She had yet to master the mysteries of the Smile and was staring at the stage with undisguised eyes-wide, mouth-open horror.
Just past her, our dad was shaking his head subtly. He sighed—something I saw rather than heard, because by now my ears were filled with a dull roar. I’d seen our dad make the same gesture of weary resignation once before: when we’d all gone out to his favorite fancy restaurant for his birthday, and a fat businessman collapsed at a nearby table and my dad the doctor knew he had to abandon his perfect steak to go treat him.
I didn’t want to look, but some irresistible force drew my eyes back to the stage. Rabbi Abramovitz had somehow managed to shepherd Eric to the Torah-reading portion of the ceremony and was holding the pointer for him, indicating lines on the scroll.
But Eric wasn’t reading. He wasn’t even looking at the Torah. He was standing there silently, his sunken zombie eyes fixed on something visible only to him, located somewhere behind and above all our heads.
“Baruch . . .” suggested the rabbi, gently prompting him.
Nothing. It was a horrible silent moment—sheer endless vacuum. No one even breathed. I wanted to scream or run or stab myself or do anything to end the pain, and I was furious at Eric for making me feel this way. Next to me, Josh was shaking with trapped mirth.
“Baruch ata . . .” Rabbi Abramovitz prompted again.
Eric’s mouth stayed shut. From somewhere deep inside him came a sound like a sped-up foghorn played in reverse.
Josh was bent double, both hands clapped over his mouth.
“Baruch ata adonai,” said the rabbi.
“Blaarrrgh!” Eric responded, and spouted a thick stream of vomit in a bold arc over the podium.
The following then happened in rapid-fire 1-2-3 order: the dull, soupy schplat of Eric’s breakfast hitting the carpeted steps; the unmistakable wet sound of an earlier meal exiting from his other end into his tighty-whities and cheap suit pants; and a two-part thud-thud as the bar mitzvah boy hit the deck, out cold.
Chaos. People leaping to their feet, screaming. The rabbi throwing himself over the Torah like a Secret Service agent protecting the president. My dad was already pushing past me to go render aid. My mom was covering my sister’s eyes. Josh was standing, repeating “Hoooh, shit! Hooooh, shit!” in joyful disbelief.
It all swirled around me, people jostling me left and right, but I sat there, numb, expressionless, already in shock, my impending and inevitable doom now clear to me.
And then Josh, as if reading my mind, clapped a thick hand on my shoulder and said with a huge grin, “Guess what, Isaac—in three weeks, that’s going to be you up there.”