“Yes, their children are not good Jewish children. They all head off to their summer homes and leave the old grannies to cook.”
“That’s terrible.”
“It is, Mother. And speaking of?”
“Speaking of cooking grannies?”
“Sort of, yes. I need you to call me on my regular number and tell me you’re dying.”
“What?” his mother said.
“I need you to make an appointment with your doctor for today. You go in, you get him to send you for a scan. Then call me, even if it’s the middle of my night. I need you to wake me and tell me you have cancer.”
“Wait, do I have cancer? Do I? Oh my God! How do you even know?”
“I don’t, Mother.” Hearing the panic over the line, he’d repeated an emphatic, “You don’t!”
“But how do you know I don’t? Why even say it, if I’m not sick?”
“For personal reasons I need you to call me and tell me that you do. It needs to be bad. Tell me that the doctor wants to set you up at Sloan Kettering right away.”
“What’s happening?” she’d said, her voice shaky and filling Z with an excruciating surge of guilt. “What are you saying? Do I have cancer?”
“Mother, no. You don’t. But I need you to call and tell me you do.”
His mother went quiet for some time, and then she’d started to weep.
“Don’t cry, Mother. You’re fine.”
“It’s not me,” she’d said. “It’s you. It’s happened. You’ve gone psychotic. I always sensed.”
“I’m fine, Mom. We’re both fine.”
“Oh, you’re a bit too old. Trust me, I waited. I thought we were safe by now. But you’ve always shown signs. Oh my, oh my.”
“I’m not psychotic.”
“Your grandfather was psychotic.”
“Wait, what?” Z said, drawn off on a tangent he didn’t expect. Secrets everywhere, he thought. Secrets abound.
“We never told you.”
“Which grandpa? Is it Grandpa Mike?”
“Your father’s father. Zayde Reuben.”
“How could you not tell me that before?”
“Because we wanted to avoid this. Your father and I, we thought if we didn’t say, then maybe.”
“Knowing medical history doesn’t give you psychosis. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that sort of thing skips a generation.”
She hesitated on her end, and then she said, “Skipped a generation, that’s you.”
Z thought about it. Yes, on that point, she was right.
“Well, I’m not psychotic. But I still need you to do this. I can explain when I’m home.”
“Home Israel? Or home, here? If you’re sick you can come back to your room, it’s just the same as ever. We pray every night for you to get out of that godforsaken country.”
“France?”
“Israel.”
“You sent money to Israel your whole life. You march in the stupid parade. You love Israel.”
“I do. But not for my son. And France is even worse. Tell me what’s going on! Who are you in trouble with? Tell me, and I’ll do like you say.”
“I really can’t. And don’t try and guess. But I need you to get an appointment and then a mammogram and then call. And make sure it goes through insurance right away too.”
“I hate that machine, squishing down.”
“I’m sorry, Mother. But you should get one every year. How long has it been?”
She didn’t answer.
“I’d come up with something else, a better idea, if I thought it was for nothing. A woman your age should get checked.”
“What if they find it?”
“Then maybe they can save you, and then you’ll sound more realistic on the phone.”
“You’re a terrible son.”
“I know. But if you do it, I really can come home. I can get a place near you and Dad, forever. No more travel, I promise.”
“If I tell you the cancer thing?”
“Yes, if you do that all today. If you get in somewhere and call me, and never tell anyone about the talk we’re having now. Just delete the alert, and do like I say. I’ll call and check in on you a bunch of times, okay? Just be yourself. Be your paranoid, negative, hopeless self. Only, add the cancer.”
“Because you’re in trouble?”
“Because your son is in some trouble. Yes.”
It’s this notion of trouble that Z is very much distracted by as his boss says, “I hope you don’t think it crass of us.” And his boss, reading that distraction expertly well, says, “Us, taking advantage of your mother’s illness in this way.”
“Of course not,” Z says.
“We must harness what we can, even when it means playing on the emotions of others. It’s the unfortunate nature of our work.”
“I don’t understand?” Z says, in what might as well be his patented catchphrase.
“We thought, this trip of yours, charged as it is, is also a perfect way to get you to Tel Aviv under the radar.”
“Instead of America?”
“On the way to America. They just want a day of your time, to debrief you about Berlin. We were already talking about how to get you back for a visit without drawing attention, and then this very unfortunate alibi came up, and we thought, yes, why not?”
“You want me to change my flights? So they can talk to me in Israel?”
“To debrief you about Berlin, yes. But also, no,” his boss says. “We don’t need you to change your flights. We’ve already taken the liberty.” Here his boss reaches into a desk drawer and presents an itinerary and set of tickets to Z.
Z reads the schedule, trying to seem absolutely, beyond at ease with the change.
His boss leans across the desk and points at the paper.
“That lists it as direct to New York. But the tickets are obviously correct. The Tel Aviv leg is there.”
It’s so smart, and so simple, Z thinks. He is found out already, and they are asking him to transport himself home for retribution. No muss, no fuss. Easy as pie.
Z looks to his boss with what must be obvious terror on his face. Revealing, he knows. Still, what can Z do in the moment but forge ahead?
“It’s a perfect idea,” Z says. “A great way to pop me in and out unnoticed. But the reason I asked to talk, and forgive me for the confusion, was the opposite.”
“Of what?”
“Of what you’re proposing,” Z says. “I wanted you to know that after I e-mailed you, and after I booked the ticket that I, of course, knew you’d see—my mother called again. We had a good long talk. And things are different.”
“She doesn’t have cancer?”
“No, she still does. Bad cancer. It’s that, with the chemo, and the radiation, the rounds and rounds—it will go on for some time. And she knows how much pressure I’m under at work. That is, at the work she knows as my work.”
“Okay,” his boss says.
“So, it’s already urgent, but what she was saying is that it would stay urgent and that I should save up my leave. That it would be better if I came for the Jewish holidays. She is brave, my mother. She said, typical her, that it would give her time to get used to being a sick person. She said, having her son there for Rosh Hashanah, it’s only a few weeks away, and it would give her something to live for.”
His boss swivels in his chair, considering. His face shows nothing, a picture of restraint.
“I appreciate your point,” his boss says. “Regardless, why not start an unofficial leave now? Stay close, recharge your batteries, and let me talk to Tel Aviv.”