“Celebrate love!”
That’s what Crystal shouts as we walk in, and a whoop goes through the crowd. There are nearly a hundred guests in the big yoga studio, spilling into the hallways, scattered throughout the Center. I recognize various yoga students, teachers, even the owners of the studio, who wear strange tunics everywhere they go. They’re the ones who gave Mom the job in the first place.
A murmur goes through the crowd as people recognize Mom. They surround her and congratulate her. Mom is silent the whole time.
Mom scans the crowd, ignoring the people who are greeting her. She keeps moving until she finds the guru.
They stare at each other.
The crowd senses this and quiets down. People smile and step out of the way so they can get to one another.
The guru comes forward.
Mom does not.
She stays where she is, her eyes locked on him. The guru glances at me, then back at Mom.
“You broke my heart,” Mom says.
There’s a gasp in the room.
“I saw you,” Mom says. “At Sally’s house.”
Sally stands there shocked. People look at her.
The guru clears his throat. “I was there. Yes.”
“It wasn’t the first time, was it?” Mom says.
“No,” he says.
Mom starts to cry.
People in the room look at the ground.
“But you told me you loved me,” Mom says through sniffles.
“I do,” the guru says.
“You have an interesting way of showing it.”
“Do we need to do this now?” the guru says. He motions to the people in the room.
“What better time?” Mom says. “Let’s get it out in the open.”
In a strange way, I’m proud of her. She’s confronting him in front of everyone. Maybe I was wrong about Mom. Maybe she knows what she’s doing more than I think she does.
“Very well,” the guru says with a sigh. “You’re asking if I love you, and I do. We are bonded together through time. You are my special flower.”
“But you want a bouquet,” Mom says.
“It’s one of the ways we communicate love in our community. I share my physical self with my followers. I’m sorry if I misled you.”
“What if I want to share myself with other men?”
“I would understand that.”
“Oh my God,” Mom says. She squeezes her head between her hands. “This is not—this is not the kind of relationship I want.”
The guru comes closer to my mother.
“This doesn’t change what you and I have,” he says.
He reaches for her, but she twists away.
“No,” Mom says.
“Please, Rebekah—”
“I won’t do it. Not like this. I’ve had too many terrible relationships like this,” Mom says, and she starts crying again.
I’m suddenly hopeful. Mom is breaking up with the guru. She’s going to finish this once and for all, then she’ll grab Sweet Caroline and me and bring us home.
She’ll be heartbroken. But we’ll be a family again. At least the assemblance of one.
“I can share you in many ways,” Mom says to the guru. “But not like this.”
“I see,” the guru says. “You have—different customs here. This can be discussed.”
“It can?” Mom says, softening.
“No, Mom!” I shout.
“Stay out of this, Sanskrit,” she says.
Sweet Caroline grabs my arm.
“You should have told me,” Mom says to the guru. “I shouldn’t have had to find out from my son.”
He bows his head in front of Mom.
She takes a step towards him.
He says something to her, so quietly that I can’t hear it.
She’s inches from him now, her face by his face, the two of them whispering to each other.
I want to scream again, run to Mom, and shake her until she wakes up.
But I can’t move. I can only watch them drift towards each other slowly, so slowly, speaking the whole time, until at last their bodies are touching.
Then they reach out and wrap their arms around each other.
It reminds me of the moment they met, a fierce embrace that all but absorbs my mother into the guru’s robes.
“A moment.”
That’s what the guru says on the staircase of the Center. I’m on my way out of the building when he appears at the top of the stairs.
“Sanskrit,” he says. “Son.”
“I’m not your son,” I say.
“We’re all God’s children.”
“You’re not God.”
He smiles.
“It is said that after the Buddha achieved enlightenment, he walked out into the world and nobody knew it had happened because he looked the same. They only knew later, from his actions and words.”
“So you might be God? That’s what you’re saying?”
“No, I’m not God. No more so than any of us. But I was touched by God. That’s how I became a guru.”
The sound of a flute drifts down from the party.
“If you were touched by God, then tell me what he looks like.”
“I didn’t see him. I experienced him,” the guru says. “Just like you did.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You have not felt the presence of God?”
“Never,” I say.
“Yet I can feel his presence in you.”
“I don’t want anything to do with God. Or gurus. Or religions. Or any of it.”
“It’s not too late for you to come with us,” the guru says.
I push open the front door.
The guru says, “I know why you did what you did at Sally’s house.”
I stop halfway out the door.
“Maybe I would have done the same thing if I were in your place,” he says.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I forgive you.”
“I don’t need your forgiveness,” I say.
“But I need to give it to you. For myself. Without forgiveness, how can we move forward?”
“I don’t believe in you.”
That’s what I tell HaShem as I walk through Brentwood.
“I never really believed in you, but I was trying to give you a chance. Whoever you are. Whatever you are. I gave you a chance, but that’s over.”
I walk past the shops and restaurants on San Vicente. They’re starting to fill up with the dinner crowd. I see people through the windows, laughing over plates of food.
I stop at a place where two streets merge together in a V shape. It’s a mini park of trees and grass.
“I prayed to you when my parents were fighting and you didn’t keep them together. I prayed for The Initials and you brought her back to me, only to give her a boyfriend. You stole my best friend from me in Israel. And now you’re taking my mother.”
I step into the park. I run my hand down the rough bark of a tree.
I imagine what I must look like. A crazy boy on San Vicente, shouting like a homeless man. Maybe this is what makes people homeless. They’re not crazy on their own, but life has driven them crazy. A terrible God has stolen their lives, and they’ve snapped. Now they stand on street corners, in parks, in alleyways, on the beach in Santa Monica—and they shout at heaven.
Just like me.
It’s almost funny, this idea. Because I realize I’ve found my group.
It’s not the Jews or the Sikhs or the yoga devotees. It’s not the good Jewish kids at my school or the followers of the guru.
I belong to the abandoned. We shout at the sky and the sky does not answer.
I haven’t been touched by God. The guru was wrong about that. If there’s a God at all, I’ve been stepped on by him. Zadie was stepped on, along with most of our family, in the Holocaust.
I sit at the base of the tree in the dark. My legs grow cold under me.