that same state. Maybe it was an ugly twist of fate that he went from a happy-go-lucky kid running the streets with his friends while his bubbe sold bread at her little stall at the Port market to this anxious, disaster of a man who couldn’t keep it together for ten minutes on a date let alone enough time to get laid. And maybe it was always meant to be.
Simon was young when his ema and bubbe packed up everything they owned, swaddled his brand-new brother, and boarded a plane for a place he’d only read about in schoolbooks. It was terrifying at first, to be ripped from his home and settled in a little apartment above a bake shop where no one spoke his language. He didn’t understand why he was there, just that his mother was crying a lot, and Bubbe woke up for all of Levi’s feedings, and Simon had to spend hours and hours with a stranger trying even harder at English because he hadn’t been any good at it in school before they left Tel Aviv.
It was six weeks before he understood that his father was dead. His mother appeared in his doorway in the middle of the night, staring at him until she realized he was awake. She looked haggard, hair a mess and unwashed for weeks. Her eyes were red-rimmed and dry only because he was pretty sure she didn’t have tears left.
She didn’t say anything right away. She just stared at him, then padded with soft, bare feet across the worn carpet and she climbed into his small bed. There wasn’t space for the two of them, but she took him into her arms and there was the tiniest sliver of the mother she’d been before everything was turned on its head.
“Ema,” he whispered.
She shook her head and sniffed. “He’s not coming back, neshama shelli.” She stroked the top of his curls with shaking fingers.
“Who isn’t?” he asked.
Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. “There was a raid. Abba didn’t get out in time.”
That was all she said, and Simon was barely eight, but he knew what that meant. Most of the kids his age there knew what that meant. Simon was born into violence and turmoil. He was born into the strangest juxtaposition of peace and love, and violence and death. He knew what bomb drills were, and he knew what it was to be carefree on the beach thinking he would live forever.
But life was fleeting, and it was a hard lesson for a small boy to learn so quickly. His father had been a good man. He was tall, larger than life with an infectious laugh he used against his mother whenever she was angry. Later, she’d remember it. She’d tell him, “I could never stay mad at your abba. He’d just smile at me, and wink, and chuckle, and my anger would fly away like a little bird.”
Simon stopped missing him so hard by the time he was nine. Levi was just starting to walk, and his mother was starting to stay out all night. The kids at school still mocked him because he hadn’t lost his funny accent and he had to count in Hebrew to remember his multiplication tables. Bubbe was working to keep their family going, and when his mother did come home, she was like a storm cloud.
He forgot quickly what it meant to be a kid. He forgot what it was like to have real friends, or real freedom. His mother was never around, but when she was, all she’d do was scream. “I don’t want Simon all alone here!” Her voice would rise and carry through the house, and Levi would whimper, and Simon would hold him a little tighter, like he could protect him from the wrath of the grieving woman. “He’s here taking care of the baby while you’re in your shop! What kind of life is that for him? I’m trying to make things better for us.”
“You leave Simon alone all the time,” Bubbe would shout back. “You go out, you drink, you sleep around. What’s next, Miriam? Another baby? Some American goyishe seed growing in your belly?”
His mother swore at her, something shattered on the floor, and then she was crying again. She was always, always crying. “I can’t let anything happen to him.”
“And what about Levi?”
She never had any answer to that when Bubbe would ask.
Late at night, she’d come into the bedroom and he’d watch