Thanksgiving vacation my sophomore year I bring Jessica home with me. Several years older than I and a graduate student in anthropology, she helps my mother with Thanksgiving dinner, talks at length with my father who retains a lifelong interest in Margaret Mead, and makes such a positive impression on them both that my mother whispers to me as we are about to leave for the airport, ”She`s a jewel.” But at school, I sink into a profound depression. My grades plummet and although Jessica tries to stand by me I manage to chase even her away. She finds her own apartment, but continues to call every day to check up on me. I become more withdrawn, however, and after a while, I ask her to stop phoning. I watch television and eat chocolate donuts, drink milk from the carton and stare at the dark smudge marks my lips leave on the spout.
My father appears one afternoon, a surprise visit, he says. I know by the look on his face, though, that he has come because of Jessica. I burst into tears when I see him. ”What has happened, Ephram?” he says. But I don`t know what has happened, only that I can no longer study, I don`t care about school and have no chance of passing finals; I don`t care if I flunk out.
”Your mother is very worried. She wanted to come with me but I thought it best if I came alone. Is there anything I can do to help you? Is there something wrong in school, you don`t like your courses, the pressure perhaps of too many hours. . .”
”I haven`t been to class in weeks,” I say. ”I can`t go. Even a trip to the store is overwhelming.” I start to cry again. ”I want to go home. I want to go back with you.”
”But what will you do back there?” my father says. ”There is nothing at home for you now. You have your studies here, your friends.”
I look at my father. As always, he is dressed neatly, and warmly, a blue blazer and gray slacks, a wool vest under his coat. Meanwhile, my apartment remains a mess, dishes in the sink, clothes everywhere, my hair unwashed.
”I`ll find a job, I`ll work and make money.”
”And live at home?”
”Yes, what`s wrong with that?”
My father pauses. ”I don`t know. I would think that you`d enjoy the freedom of living on your own.”
”I have freedom and privacy at home. You`ve never told me what to do or when to come in. I`m not happy here.”
”But Ephram, changing the place you live will not solve your problems. You need to get to the bottom of this.”
”I don`t care, I just want to go home! Can`t you understand that?” I am almost screaming. ”I have to go back. I can`t make it here.”
For the rest of the winter, I work in a bubble gum factory near Philadelphia. It is miserable but the more miserable the better because I feel as if I deserve the punishment of tedious, demeaning work for failing in school. I am paid minimum wage, $1.85 an hour. So much sugar hangs in the air- we throw bags of it into a mixing contraption resembling the gigantic maw of a steam shovel-that the people who have worked for years at the factory have lost many of their teeth. The gum itself comes out on long (and unsanitary) splintered boards that I carry to racks, which are taken to another station where these long tubular strips of bubble gum-more like waxy pink sausages than gum at this stage-are cut into bite-size pieces with a tool akin to a large pizza wheel.
One day at the beginning of spring I receive a letter from the draft boad. According to their records my student deferment has expired; I am now eligible to be considered for military service.
My father comes home early from his office hour at school. He himself hates the war, the senseless bombing and killing. He has marched with his college`s students and protested the presence on campus of recruiters from a chemical company that makes napalm. He has, in fact, been more active than myself who has withdrawn into the routine and oblivion of factory labor, for which there are no deferments.
”What are your plans?” my father asks.
”I don`t know. Canada, I suppose, if all else fails.”
”And what is Tall else`?”
”A medical deferment.”
”On what basis?” ”My mental condition.” ”But you have never been to a psychiatrist. You have no history.” ”I don`t know then.” I shrug. I feel numb, resigned. Why not basic training and then the jungles of Southeast Asia? Could it be much worse than the bubble gum factory?
”You will not go. That is all there is to it. We will make sure of that.”
”And how will you do that?”
”We`ll hide you, if necessary.”
I look at my father and almost laugh. But I can see he is serious, alarmed.
”What are you talking about-hide me? Where?”
He picks up his newpaper and folds it back, once, twice, three times until he has a long strip of news in front of him. It is the idiosyncratic way he likes to read the paper-folding it up like a map until he is down to a small, tight square of information the size of a wallet or obituary. I think that it must make him feel some control over the world`s chaotic events to read about them in such miniature, compressed spaces.
My mother brings in a stuck jar for one of us to loosen, and my father puts down his newspaper, which pops open on his lap like an accordian. I am still thinking about his wanting to hide me, aware that the draft has touched off buried fears for him, a flashback to the war, some instinctive response to the personal terror of his family being taken away from him. ”I`ll get out of it, Dad,” I say. ”Don`t worry. I won`t go.”
”Don`t worry, don`t worry, is that what you think is the problem here?
You have put yourself in this position, though I begged you not to. What is there to do now but worry!” He stands up. ”I am sick with worry, if you must know. This is my fault. I should have demanded you stay in school, not let you come here!”
I have never heard him raise his voice like this. His body begins to tremble and from the kitchen my mother hurries in with her hand over her heart. ”What is going on here?” she says. ”What are you arguing about?”
”Nothing,” my father answers. ”The argument is finished,” and he goes into his study and closes the door-a sight I am used to from childhood. I hear him weep but rather than sadness I feel a great relief; finally, something I`ve done has touched him.
I do not get drafted but receive a high number in the first lottery. The long and tiresome depression, the deadness I have felt, is replaced with the exhilaration of a survivor, a life reclaimed. I make plans to visit Europe, use the money I`ve saved from the bubble gum factory to travel for three months. Guidebooks about England, France, Spain and Italy cover my bed. I pore over them and come up with a tentative itinerary. But when I actually get to Europe I find I make a detour from England to Holland. I locate the Jewish quarter where my father hid during the war, find his school-the Vossius Gymnasium-and then what I`ve come for: the bakery. It is still there, although the original owners who saved my father have long ago died. I explain to the current owners who I am; they tell me in broken English that yes, they have heard what happened here during the war, they know about my father and the Koops who saved him; the story is legend. ”Does the oven still exist by any chance?” I ask.
They take me to the back, outside to a shed. It is here, covered with a tablecloth. I ask them if I can be by myself for a few moments and they say certainly, no one will disturb me.
A squat and solid object, the oven stands only chest high. I pull open the door and look inside. The opening is deeper than it is wide, and the height a little less than 2 feet. I hoist myself up to sit on the edge. Then I swing my legs around and push my body in feet first. My neck is back against the left edge. I cannot go any further. My shoulder sticks out too much even when I bend my knees into my chest. I do not understand how he did this, but I am determined to fit inside, so I slide out again and try to enter without my shoes and without my jacket. I tuck my legs under and pull my head inside, my back curved tight as an archer`s bow. I hook my finger through the match hole and close the door. The stove smells of mildew and carbon; the scaled roughness of the iron ceiling grates against my cheek. It is pitch black except for the match hole through which I can see. I put my eye up to it and watch. Soon I hear footsteps and I feel frightened, but the footsteps recede in the distance and the bakery becomes silent.
