If his grandkids didn’t kill him first.
Because there were Josh and Emily, all three of them now seated in a prominent position close to the aisle and near the front of the room, just four rows from the bimah, and even though they were huddled over slightly, it was clear that they had their cell phones out and they were texting. (Middlestein thought texting was the same as Morse code, and the more people texted, the closer America came to being a nation at war. “Think about it,” he’d told Beverly, poking his index finger on his temple.) He leaned across Josh and squeezed one of Emily’s hands—the hand that was tap-tapping—and rested his arm across Josh’s lap, and then, with as much restraint as possible, because he did not want to alert the Cohns and the Grodsteins and the Weinmans and the Frankens, all of whom were seated two rows behind him, that his grandchildren had apparently been raised by wolves, he said, “Put those away.” Josh, simple, scrawny, sweet-faced, looked instantly terrified and shoved his phone into his back pocket, but Emily was another story. Emily was so much like her grandmother and her aunt—at least in appearance, but Middlestein suspected it went much further than that—she was practically marked by the devil. She gave him a mean look, and was precariously close to opening her mouth, and what she might say, and at what volume she might say it, he could only imagine. If she were truly like her grandmother, it would be just loud enough so that everyone around them could hear but not so loud that it could be considered inappropriate. Nothing to ruin anyone’s reputation over anyway. Not like everyone hadn’t lost it on their spouse at one time or another.
But young Emily did not yell. She merely whispered, “I’m not done yet,” and then, in perhaps her most offensive act of the evening (and there were a few yet to come), shook his hand off hers with vigor. Middlestein pulled his hand back, stunned by her aggression. Josh turned to her openmouthed but did not say a thing, closed his mouth, turned away, faced forward, opened his mouth again, and turned toward her, and the two of them stared at each other, and then—this was the part that crushed Middlestein, that made him realize that it was possible there was no one left in this family he had a decent relationship with (And was it his fault? He had nearly convinced himself it wasn’t.)—Josh let off a short, staccato laugh, as if he were trying to control it but could not.
Once he had bathed these little babies. Once he had bounced them on his knee and ran his fingers through their soft curls. These were going to be the children he would never argue with, never punish, whose curfew he would never have to worry about. He would never have to spank them. He would never have to disappoint them. All he had to do was spoil them rotten, overspend on every birthday and Hanukkah just to see their eager smiles. Now they revered their iPhones above religious decorum and thought he was a schmuck because he’d left his wife. Now they didn’t give a shit what he thought.
Middlestein was devastated throughout the entire service. He could barely bring himself to sing the Shema, which had always been such a soothing prayer for him, a proclamation of his faith. It had always been so good to believe in something. Now he was distracted by the little miss down the row, with her eye rolling and sighing and the loudest page flipping this side of the Mississippi, her brother choking in his laughter, the Cohns and the Grodsteins and the Weinmans and the Frankens giving him rueful glances. It wasn’t enough that he had abandoned his wife, now he had ill-behaved grandchildren too? Shameful. He was shamed.