The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank Page A

all were.
    Moreh Pinkus was saying, “Finish up,” when Miss Bell appeared at our door. “Pardon me,” he said to us, and joined her out in the hall. Everyone turned around to look; Margie was out there, too.
    Miss Bell appeared as agitated and angry as Margie appeared calm and bored.
    I kept trying to convince myself that I hadn’t gotten caught and wasn’t in trouble, but I felt I had and was.
    When Moreh Pinkus came back in, I was ready for him to lean down and tell me to collect my things. But he walked right past me and only once he was back at his desk caught my eye. He sighed, and asked everyone to pass their tests forward.
    . . . . .
    That night, my parents announced that they’d smoked their last cigarettes. I got their pack from my cardboard refrigerator, and they made a ritual of running the leftover cigarettes under the kitchen faucet, as they had in the past.
    For the next few days, Robert described the triumphant march ofmy parents’ bodies back to health, their blood vessels expanding, their cilia waking up. During dinner, he’d say, “Doesn’t everything taste better?” And afterward, “Why don’t we all take a brisk walk?”
    My father ground his teeth; my mother wrung her hands.
    . . . . .
    On Yom Kippur, my father wanted to walk to the synagogue, but my mother took too long getting dressed, and it was all worse because they weren’t smoking.
    Even though we drove, we were late.
    The only seats left in the synagogue were in the last row, right behind where Moreh Pinkus sat with his family. My mother sat directly behind him, and I behind his youngest son.
    There were four sons, all wearing pin-striped suits like the one Moreh wore each Wednesday. He himself was in a black suit. Mrs. Pinkus wore a silky flowered dress and a purple hat, and her hair hung in a glossy pageboy my mother would later tell me was a wig.
    In front of me, the littlest Pinkus was bending his thumb back as far as it could go; he released it, and then bent it back again. Himself his only toy, he did the same with each of his fingers, and then began to experiment with the mobility of his ear.
    Pretty soon the novelty of observing the Pinkuses wore off, and the service became like every other one I’d ever gone to. The rabbi, whose black robes reminded me of the ones my father wore in court, did what seemed to be an imitation of God; when he raised his arms to motion for us to sit or stand, his sleeves hung down a little like bat wings. He droned on, and when the word congregation appeared in the prayer book it was our turn to drone.
    I looked around to see if anyone was atoning. I knew that Leslie Liebman’s face probably had atonement written all over it, in fluent Hebrew, but I just saw her from behind, standing with her family.
    Jack whispered in my ear, “My kingdom for a Life Saver; pass it down.”
    I said it to my mother, who opened her pocketbook. She took out the sugar-free mints that she carried around whenever she was trying to quit smoking. They hardly had any taste, but I took one. The slightentertainment it offered my mouth was more than my eyes and ears were getting.
    It was then that Moreh Pinkus began mumbling and rocking back and forth in his seat. I must have seen my grandfather do this when I was little because I knew it was how religious men prayed.
    My mother appeared almost girlishly embarrassed.
    Jack put his mouth to my ear and whispered, “Rock and roll.”
    I said a very quiet, “Shh.”
    It occurred to me that Moreh Pinkus might be the only truly religious person in the whole synagogue, the only one who believed and understood everything he was saying. He wasn’t even reading from the book.
    It was out of respect for Moreh Pinkus that I stopped saying the congregation parts aloud with everyone else. I read them silently. But what did “Hear, O Israel” mean? And “The Lord is