than that. I’ve never wanted more than that. I’ve just wanted things to be easier. Is that so wrong?
“No one cares how weird your life is, Judy. Or all the ways you think it’s failed you,” Gary says. “Your mother’s gone. No one sees the bird on your head except you.”
Part Three
Bracing for Change
Michael Wasserman
Trying to distract myself from the emotional hangover of our disastrous trip to Vermont, I’m at Costco a few days later, fondling a twenty-count bag of small avocados, while Teddy is off in the video game aisle. I’m hoping to find even one avocado that is soft enough to eat tonight, or tomorrow night, or maybe this month, which I know probably isn’t going to happen, since finding an avocado that’s ripe when you want to eat it is nearly impossible. Everything in life is about timing, about patience, about having faith in the future, but I’ve never believed in any of that. All the cigarettes I smoked before meeting Gary because I was convinced I’d never meet anyone and thus would never have anything to live for; all the times I’ve tried to get back to my work—the writing and the drawing—and failed. Maybe I wasn’t ready. Maybe I’m still not ready. Maybe instead of blaming myself for what happened at Sari Epstein’s I should accept the fact that I’m pushing myself to do something I don’t actually want to do anymore. Maybe I should just move on.
Moving on (“Is ‘moving on’ like ‘giving up’ but with a better publicist?” “When accepting failure is a Good Thing”) is what I’m thinking about when I think I see Michael Wasserman from Hebrew school looking at a jumbo pack of tomatoes. Michael Wasserman, who I’d had a secret crush on all those years ago because of his slim chinos and thick brown hair and perfect teeth and always-white Jack Purcell sneakers, but who had never liked me back. At least I didn’t think he did. Was it possible he’d liked me, too? Probably not, especially since he’d started dating Janie Levy, who also had perfect teeth, during our bar/bat mitzvah year, and to my knowledge, they had never broken up. But now that I’m technically separated, I force myself to question all my default negative thoughts—especially that he could never have liked me because of what I did to him all those years ago by accident.
Almost forty years ago I caused Michael Wasserman’s Passover-themed shoe box diorama depicting Moses receiving the Ten Commandments to fall off the teacher’s desk when I stupidly reached for another piece of matzo that I wasn’t even hungry for. Wasn’t it just yesterday that everyone turned and stared at me without helping to pick it up and put it back together? That he saw the shoe box on the floor; all his hard work, all his careful gluing, his tiny precision handiwork—ruined? We were eleven or twelve then, the age when boys still show their feelings, the age that Teddy used to be when his face would soften and fall with every passing sadness. That day, in the few seconds it took Michael Wasserman to register the accidental demolition of his construction-in-miniature, his eyes had welled with tears like something actually hurt. He looked crushed. I’m certain I’d gasped and covered my mouth with my hands in shame. Was there anything worse than destroying someone’s art project?
But before I could apologize, he’d bent down in his chinos, carefully picked up the shoe box, put it on top of the pile of books and notebooks he was carrying, and left the classroom for the carpool line. All without saying a word. I didn’t move. My face was red-hot, my stomach churned with embarrassment and self-loathing and recriminations I was convinced would last forever: Why hadn’t I just sat down in my stupid chair with the little side-desk attached? Weren’t my braces already filled with enough chewed-up matzo? If only I hadn’t reached for that second piece, none of this would have happened. I was wearing my favorite powder-blue ski jacket, which meant that it was sometime between March and April, during New England’s tease of changing seasons that never fails to trick and disappoint—there must still have been a chill of winter in the air, despite some light in the sky. The principal, Mr. Wrath—which was really his name and really how he spelled it—poked his head into the classroom and told me that my mother was in the carpool line, waiting. It