Mitzvah Man

4

Walking to the beach, just a quarter mile down the twisting sand road, he finds tears in his eyes, not entirely due to wind off the ocean. He’s so proud of her, this Lisa so grown up already. “Honey, well, you did just a fantastic job.” “Well, thanks, Dad,” she says, “and . . . you were great with the police. Thank you.” This Thank you worries him; it shows how uneasy she is. Who’s the parent here? “There was a minute back there,” he says, “I got to admit, I figured it was the end of our travels.” He squeezes her hand, then drops it as if he needs his hand to zip up his windbreaker, but actually because he realizes he’s not holding it as a father holds a child’s hand but swinging it, as if he were himself a pretend child; as if they were two children , brother and sister, together. The ocean grows louder. It’s a gray morning. They climb a cleft between dunes, sea grass on both sides. Preparing for their visit, the grasses have spun elegant circles around themselves. At the top of the passage, they stop to watch the ocean, near high tide, churned up from last night’s storm. They pass the charred remains of a beach fire, step around jetsam of winter storms—Styrofoam fishing floats, sprawls of netting and splintered driftwood. “The detritus of God,” he says, opening his hands to display God’s bounty. “What’s that mean? Detritus?”|4| “Broken leavings,” he said. “Debris. God’s leavings.” “Da-ad?” She sings it in two syllables, high and low, as she always does when he’s said something to irritate her. “Uh-huh?” She needs a few seconds, furrowing her brow, sucking on her lip, and curling her fingers as if they were wrapped around the neck of a mental violin, to get it out. “Dad? So just tell me this. Really. What’s the difference if you say ‘debris’ or you say ‘God’s debris’?” “There is a difference.” “So? Tell me. What?” “Thank you for asking. Really. It’s so wonderful you’ve grown up enough to challenge me and not let it go with a wry look, like ‘How uncool.’” “It’s not uncool. It’s weird. I mean. And frankly? So fakey. Dad? Why God’s debris or whatever the word was?” “Okay. Plain old debris is random, is ugly, is accidental; it’s something to cover up. Right? It’s chance, it’s chaos, and worse than chance— uch—it shouldn’t be there. It’s garbage. God’s debris—in my highfalutin’ way I said ‘detritus’—implies there’s a secret plan going on, it’s like God’s work of art. Okay?” “Wow. Well, so do you really think it is—is God’s work of art?” “It’s hard to explain this, but the thing is, listen, it’s not necessary to think of it as true or false—it’s a heuristic—a useful way of seeing data. A better way. At least I prefer it—don’t you? It’s so much more beautiful and just as true. Look how simple and clear everything is. How pure. Why see it as garbage? Nobody’s forcing you.” As she shrugs, a shrug muscle-by-muscle inherited from her mother, suddenly it’s as if he’s talking to Shira. Shira used to pin him down the same way. Years ago, he’d pick her up after her stint as an intern at Mass General, and they’d walk along the Charles. He remembers it as summer, a hazy sun going down over the Cambridge side (though often she pulled all-night shifts and came back to their place on Dartmouth Street too exhausted to speak). But the time he remembers,| 37 Mitzvah Man she walked along the river and, counting her points on her fingers, pulled apart his ideas—taking out her aggression on him but oh, in a comic way—after a day of frustration and overwork. Much smarter than he was, she loved unpacking his nonsense and demolishing it. Is it nonsense? Is it pure nonsense? “Lisa,” he says, “let me give you an analogy.” He sits down on a driftwood log and takes off his sneakers while he thinks. Lisa has already laid her sandals on the end of the same log. Out...