Perfectly Ordinary People(116)

‘Jake?’ I pleaded again. ‘Please? Can we just try to show a little . . . I don’t know . . . compassion here? This isn’t easy for anyone.’

‘No,’ Jake said. ‘No, it’s not easy, that’s for sure.’

‘I have no problem with the Jews,’ Dad said. ‘And no problem if I’m Jewish. None.’

‘Yeah,’ Jake said sarcastically. ‘Right.’

‘No, really,’ Dad told him. ‘It’s neither here nor there to me.’

‘So why throw me out of the house when I tried to tell you? Why all the Jewish jokes when we were kids, eh? Why all that anti-Semitic shite?’

Dad sighed. ‘Do you want to hear anything from me, Jake? Or do you just want a really good fight? Because if that’s all you’re after here, I can oblige.’

‘Of course he wants to hear, don’t you?’ I said, gently nudging Jake with my hip.

‘Sure,’ Jake said with a sigh. ‘Go ahead.’

‘So the jokes and things were wrong,’ Dad said. ‘For what it’s worth, I don’t think they . . . you know . . . were as bad as you made out. But they were wrong. So I apologise.’

Jake nodded. ‘Right,’ he said, sounding unconvinced.

‘But you don’t know everything about me,’ Dad said. ‘There are . . . I don’t know . . . reasons, I suppose. For everything.’

‘Reasons,’ Jake repeated.

‘They called me Jew-boy at school,’ Dad said. ‘That’s probably a tiny part of it.’

‘Who did?’ I asked.

‘The other boys,’ Dad said. ‘Because they saw, in the showers. So they all started calling me Jew-boy.’

‘Because you’re circumcised?’ Jake asked.

‘Yes, I thought it was, well, a medical thing . . . Sometimes it is, it can be. So that’s what I thought. But the other boys took the mickey out of me. And they started calling me Jew-boy.’

‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything,’ Jake said. ‘It just sounds like another excuse.’

‘It’s a . . . I suppose you could call it a defence mechanism,’ Dad said. ‘That’s what the shrink called it anyway. I’m not justifying it. I’m just trying to explain.’

‘A defence mechanism?’

‘Like an attempt at fitting in?’ I offered.

‘Yes,’ Dad said. ‘It was a way of telling everyone I wasn’t Jewish, I suppose. So I always told those jokes. I collected them, in a way, so that I could use them. To defend myself.’

‘So you were ashamed of being Jewish,’ Jake said.

‘I didn’t know that I was Jewish, Jake. So how could I be ashamed? I still don’t know really, do I? I suppose I probably am. And I don’t care. Really, I don’t. If anything, I feel sad that I know so little about it all, about what being Jewish even means. But I need you to at least believe that. I’m not anti-Semitic. I promise you I’m not.’

‘So what’s so hard if it’s not that?’ Jake asked, still sounding harsh.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You said it’s been a shock. That it’s been hard. So if it’s not finding out that you’re Jewish, then what?’

Dad glared at Jake and shook his head. ‘What is wrong with you, boy?’ he asked. ‘Where’s your goddamned empathy gone? When did you get to be so cold?’

‘My empathy?’ Jake said. ‘Oh, I think I lost that somewhere. Maybe during that wedding where none of my family showed up.’

Because things seemed to be spinning out of control, I put my wine glass down and reached out so that I could touch both their wrists at once, forming a symbolic bridge between them. ‘Can we please just take a breath at this point?’ I asked. ‘Can we please just try to remember that we’re family, and deep down we love each other, and just, I don’t know, chill out a bit? And can we please try to listen to each other properly? I think it would help.’

Jake sighed deeply. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Fine. So tell us, Dad. Tell us what was so hard for you.’

‘The betrayal, mainly,’ Dad said.

‘My betrayal?’ Jake asked.

Dad laughed. ‘No! My parents’ betrayal. They lied to me. They lied to me every day for my whole life. In fact, my whole life has been nothing but a long list of lies. I have no idea who I even am anymore . . . Can you imagine how that feels? Actually, there’s no reason you should be able to imagine how that feels. But maybe you could try.’

‘Sure,’ Jake said reluctantly. ‘OK, I get that.’

‘Do you?’ Dad asked. ‘Do you really? Because, you know, I worked it out. There were more than twenty thousand days when they could have told me. That’s twenty thousand days each. Twenty thousand occasions when they decided to just carry on lying.’

‘I think it was really hard for them to find the right moment,’ I offered in my grandmother’s defence.

‘Hard,’ Dad said. ‘Yes, I’m sure it was. But you know, life is full of hard stuff. And if you have any balls at all, you find a way. On one of those twenty thousand-odd days, you find a day – you find one hour in one day to do that hard thing that needs to be done. To do the right thing.’