Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307) by Rachel Kadish Page A

headlong at the same time and none of it forgetting to work for even an instant. This evening, for some reason, it makes me want to feel religious. The tiles chilling my bare feet, I consider some capacious intelligence keeping it all afloat—a phosphorescent world under an invisible cap of stars. I don’t believe in God; I’ve never been able to convince myself that emperor’s wearing clothes. The only faith to which I can comfortably do lip service is an ancestral one, inherited from my grandmother: a petite matron who, when complimenting a family member or voicing her hopes for her grandchildren, would invoke the name of an Irishman (“You should only be happy, Ken O’Hara”). Only in college, in conversation with an Orthodox Jewish classmate—a species as foreign to me as the Amish—did I at last glean the meaning of my grandmother’s Yiddish disclaimer.
Kenahora: not to tempt the evil eye.
    I raise the last of my diet soda. Framed mute in my window, the city dazzles. And the hollow sensation I’ve felt since playing George’s message crystallizes into ordinary fear. “To Ken O’Hara,” I say, and drain the can. And dial.
    George is a consultant for a nonprofit specializing in education policy. On the phone, his voice is friendly and reasonable. He’s working on a smaller-schools initiative. Trying to muster public will to fix those overcrowded classrooms. Move the algebra lessons out of converted janitorial closets. Address the thirty-five-kids-per-teacher status quo and the tragic dropout rates. It’s not the kind of work where you expect dramatic victory. The idea is to turn the tide one drop at a time. Meanwhile, he likes hiking.
    Do I like hiking?
    Whatever spontaneity I felt at the reception has deserted me. I do not spill my life story like hors d’oeuvres from a sodden paper plate. In point of fact, I’m practically monosyllabic.
    George grew up in Toronto. His father and sister and three nieces, he says, are still there. He just bought a birthday present for his oldest niece. A ragtime recording. He used to play the banjo.
    Hasn’t touched it though, in two, three years.
    His voice trails off, expectant. After a moment he says, “Not a banjo player yourself, I take it?” His voice is kind. As though he’s worried for me.
    It feels like a decade since my last date. And I’m abruptly and viscerally reminded why I wanted it that way. It was because I detested this exchange—two people reading from scripts, stringing up intriguing details about themselves like bait. Awaiting nibbles.
    George jokes easily, posing the usual questions: family, life, work.
    My script is blank. “Seattle,” I say. “I was born in Seattle.”
    â€œAnd did you always know you wanted to go into American literature?”
    This man knows nothing about me. Twelve years’ commitment, books and poems into the thousands, paltry stipend paychecks: all bottleneck in my mind and I open my mouth and out pours eloquence. “Yes.”
    Trying to rouse myself, I force a laugh. “So. Do you have any pets?” I say this in a wry tone.A tone meant to acknowledge our mutual sophistication, as well as the absurdity of two adults starting from zero, gathering information about each other as though we were nothing but gawky kids hoping against hope the other likes our favorite movie.
    The line goes briefly silent.
    â€œI once had a hamster,” he says. His tone is not wry. It admits, in fact, only two possible interpretations. One: They don’t have wry in Canada. Two: We
are
gawky kids.
    Dating is—I understand this with thunderbolt clarity—an existential insult.
    â€œWould you mind holding a second?” I say. “I’ve got something on the stove.”
    With a stiff apology, I explain about my fax machine. Then, gently, warding off the specter of a cackling Yolanda, I set the receiver on the coffee