Simcha

“Ahavat Olam A-ha-vat O-lam beit Yis-ra-eil
a-m'cha a-hav-ta.
To-rah u-mits-vot, chu-kim u-mish-pa-tim, o-ta-nu li-ma-d'ta.
Al kein A-do-nai E-lo-hei-nu b'shawch-vei-nu u-v'ku-mei-nu
na-si-ach b'chu-ke-cha v'nis-mach b'div-rei to-ra-te-cha
u-v'mitz-vo-te-cha
l'o-lam va-ed.
Ki heim cha-yei-nu, v'o-rech ya-mei-nu u'va-hem neh-geh
yo-mam va-lai-la o V'a-ha-va-t'cha al ta-sir mi-me-nu l'o-la-mim.
Ba-ruch a-tah A-do-nai, o-heiv a-mo Yis-ra-eil.”

The first time Jay Strickland had heard of Michael’s cousin Isaac was the first time he and Michael had lain together, the day of Tony Fabian’s funeral. It was the day that Jay had felt like he and Michael were not just the only two best friends who had become lovers, but the only two people in the world, period. Isaac and Efrem had come down to visit them, once, for Isaac was cousin to Michael’s mother, and it had been Efrem, very direct, who had said, “You have a good spirit about you. If any of this gets heavy for you. You must come up.”

Isaac and Efrem sang:

“Sh'ma Yis-ra-eil, A-do-nai E-lo-hei-nu, A-do-nai E-chad!”

The truth was James Strickland had grown up lonely and very middle class, moving from place to place in a small and private family, and he didn’t know that many Black people he could talk too, certainly not many men whom he could talk to about being queer, which is what he said.

“Oh, I didn’t mean about that, though that is a thing,” Efrem said. “It’s a clear as a daylight that Michael inherited depression from his father, and when you’re in love with him, it’s sort of like being in love with the night.”

“I have it too. A bit.”

“Yes,” Efrem had said. “But then I suppose we all have it a bit. That’s what makes the whole thing so dangerous.”

But life caught up with them and Jay and Michael had never gotten that chance or, more realistically, taken that chance to make the short journey between Lassador and Rhodes. And then had come the time when things had collapsed between them. Michael went up now and again, and he could come back with the news that Efrem and Isaac were, “Wondering about him.”

“We should go,” Michael had said, “even if we aren’t together like we were. We should go. It would be like a pilgrimage, like going up to Jerusalem.”

“Like a festival?”

“It could be.”

Jay had felt, when they finally did go up, like it was a Day of Atonement. He had been invited and always found a reason not to come, maybe because he didn’t want to explain his life, explain loving Michael, but not being with him, explain his deliberate decision to have sex with as many different men as possible, explain Dalton. But Michael had gone Out West to be alone and to get himself together and Jay had come to collect him in the spring of the year, and it had been that time, when they were on their way home they had stopped at Efrem and Isaac’s and Jay had realized he should have done it a long time ago.

Tonight, when Jay, ever the bad driver, was startled by Michael’s quick movements and hit the brakes fast just enough to only mildly damage the truck as it crashed into the tree, Efrem and Isaac had barely been surprised and, mildly stoned, had risen slowly from their seats on the porch.

“You,” Isaac had said, giving Jay a warm hug and smelling of cedar wood, “are right on time for Shabbat.”

And now two fat candles were burning at the table, and Isaac was cutting into a roast and Efrem was passing a bowl of steaming mashed potatoes and giving Michael the butter and sour cream.

“Bacon bits are over there.”

“I see you’re not worried about being kosher,” Michael said.

“Oh, no,” Efrem shook his head with a large smile whose calm was more than marijuana could give, “I’m not worried about anything.”

Throughout the evening guest dropped by, a tall, big boned red headed woman, Jinny, Isaac’s ex wife and her equally tall husband. Later on a girl, woman really, a bandanna tied around her off blondish red hair stopped by without asking and started eating. She lit a cigarette and sat in the big chair.

“Anne,” Michael asked, “Are you still Isaac’s sister in law if he divorced your sister.”

“Of course I am,” she said, puffing away on her cigarette, “He didn’t divorce me.”

“And now,” Efrem said, clapping his thighs, “at last, why are you all here? I mean, it’s great you’re here, but you all were not great when you came.”

“They needed a full belly and a rest,” Anne said.

“They may have needed more than that,” Isaac said.

Anne shook her head.

“No one needs more than that.”

Out of Michael had tumbled the whole mad tale about the whole of that year, the swastikas, the shootings, the trash cans burning surrounded by the homeless and finally Lassador burning. How they had left in haste like those in flight, and taken Rulon Nelson with them, but Rulon had learned his ex wife had a child and he had gone back to get the kid. He was in Utah fighting with her every day.

“And who knows but that he won’t come to a bad end anyway,” Jay said.

“He might,” Efrem agreed. “But it isn’t your fault. None of it is. In this world you must do the best you can and move on. It’s good you’ve come to stay.”

“But we haven’t come to stay?” Michael said. “Have we?”

“Why not?” Isaac asked.

“We can’t just…. Run away.”

“But you said that you were running away? Staying in Egypt doesn’t make it better, and staring at tragedy doesn’t make it go away.”

“You spent a long time climbing out of a pit,” Efrem added, looking from one to the other, “and now the whole world seems like a pit. But it isn’t, and you know it. The rivers and the trees tell it to you. There’s nothing wrong with settling down with the people who love you and paying more attention to the rivers and the trees than that burning old city.”

“And besides,” Isaac said, “Lassador stopped burning, so why shouldn’t you? Sunset tomorrow is the end of the High Holidays, Simchat Torah, stay with us at least for that, and see if the world doesn’t change.”

Around midnight, Anne got up to go home. She was a Sister of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and they did not live in convents, but two by two. Sister Mags was eighty, which is how Anne preferred it, and waiting up for her safe return.

“Call us when you get home,” Isaac said, standing up to kiss his sister in law on the cheek.

They were right, Michael thought, not only he but Jay had gone through so much to climb out of their own pit. They must not fall into it again. Having risen out of their own misery it was easier to see the misery around them and yet, if the world was burning, it was also cooling. If things were being wounded, they were also being healed. One had to sit still, live in the tension of it, and wait for a calming wind.

They thought they were going to bed, but bed was a long time coming, and then Michael and Jay went into the shower. They’d thought of going in separately, but that made no sense. The two bedrooms had been one, and either Isaac and Efrem, or Isaac’s aunt had put a thin wall up between them and added a new door. Isaac had changed the sheets in the spare room with the big soft bed, and he settled Jay and Michael in there. When sleep came it came fully.

When sleep fled, it fled fully as well. It fled with a thump on the wall.

Jay Strickland lay awake as the wall was hit once, and then after a while, again, and then more rapidly.

“Ef…” he heard Isaac moan.

The bed bumped the wall again and he heard Isaac murmur, “Oh, Ef. Oh my God, oh baby.”

Jay lay in the bed, listening, his body going hot and now he felt Michael’s hands moving on him and knew Michael was awake as well. He was about to say that they couldn’t, but on the other side of the wall, things grew more frantic. Jay could hear a breathless voice calling out. He removed his shorts and began to make love to Michael, The sex on the other side of the wall urged them on, and soon, in their bed, they were crying out, and when they cried out, the shouts on the other side of the wall grew louder, and when their bed hit the wall on the other side, the other bed also hit more frequently. Apparently whatever effort at quiet Efrem and Isaac had been making they forsook.

Desire urged on desire, and though they had begun last, it was Jay who startled himself, startled them all with a loud cursing shout he could not keep in, shaken by the rocketing shock that took his body after the tension of the last few days. Kneeling over Michael he almost spun out of control, and on the other side of the wall, he heard laughter.

Michael laughed quietly and Jay felt himself chuckling, but the lovemaking continued on both sides of the wall. As the black sky turned grey, eventually all of them succumbed to orgasm, and then to laughter, and then to laughter drifting into quiet and slumber. In time they could smell… eggs? Yes. And bacon. Coffee percolating. It was while Jay and Michael dozed naked together, like spiders limbs coiled in limbs, the sun coming in, that Efrem and Isaac, not knocking, opened the door. Efrem was in his underwear and Isaac was naked as Adam so, though the sun was shining on his ass, Jay felt too innocent to care.

“Breakfast soon, and the Simchat Torah service starts at nine thirty, but we can be there whenever, unless you just want to stay here.”

“We do want to go,” Michael said, stretching and yawning as he and Jay separated.

“Simchat?” Michael said. “I know the Torah part, but I always forget the Simchat.”

“From Simcha,” Isaac pronounced it, “Seem- hah!” A happy sound.

Efrem had gone back to finish breakfast. Jay pulled the sheet over him, but slowly because he was not in a hurry to be covered and neither was Michael. It was as if they’d spent a lifetime being covered up in something. The sunlight and being seen by other people, even Isaac who wore nothing but his glasses, was vital.

“Oh, you mustn’t ever forget Simcha,” Isaac chided, folding his arms across his chest and crossing one leg over the other, “and you certainly can’t live without it. None of us can.”

Half asleep under the light of the sun and its Indian summer heat coming through the bedsheet, eyes closed, Jay Strickland informed his lover:

“Simcha…. Means joy.”