Swimming Across the Hudson Read Online Free

and therefore more important? Perhaps Jonathan had coached Sandy. Perhaps Sandy had guessed how to win my father’s heart, by being an interested student.
    â€œI’ve wondered that myself,” my father said. “Why harp on Egypt so many years later? But it’s less what happened in Egypt than what happened afterward—Mount Sinai and the giving of the Torah. Before the Exodus, the Jews weren’t a people. They were simply the Israelites, the Eevreem. But in the desert they were given the Torah. That’s what transformed them into a nation before God. Egypt was the beginning of this process.”
    Framed photographs of Justices Brandeis and Frankfurter, my father’s heroes when he was young, hung on the dining room walls. Above my mother’s head, facing the Hudson River, were bookshelves built into the wall. I’d once counted the books on them; there were more than five hundred. Who else had books even in the dining room? What could Sandy make of this?
    We had a matzo sandwich with horseradish and haroset , the horseradish to commemorate the pains of slavery. We ate a full meal, and for dessert had kosher-for-Passover seven-layer cake made from potato flour. Finally we ate the afikoman , which we’d hidden at the beginning of the seder.
    â€œThis is the real dessert,” my father said. “It’s better than seven-layer cake.”
    Then we said Grace after Meals. Sandy stayed quiet, with his head bowed. Jonathan and I had stopped being religious our freshman year of college; my parents knew that. But when I came home, I acted as if everything were the same. I went to synagogue with my father; I celebrated the sabbath in my parents’ home. Jonathan didn’t approve of this. You shouldn’t pray, he said, to someone you don’t believe in. Now, though, at the seder, he was singing along. I was singing too, happy to see that we were a family again.
    My mother asked Sandy about his childhood. Had he spent his whole life in New Mexico? Had his parents come to visit him at Yale?
    â€œThey’ve never been east of the Mississippi,” Sandy said. “They’d like to come, but it’s expensive.” Sandy’s father owned a repair shop and didn’t want to leave it unattended. Sandy’s parents had never been on an airplane, and Sandy suspected they were afraid of flying. Here he was, the classic story: the boy who goes to college and leaves everything behind, who can never come home again.
    Jonathan’s and Sandy’s hands touched. What exactly did I feel? Was it mere discomfort? For my parents? For myself? Or was it envy, really, that Sandy had taken my brother away from me? Walking down Riverside Drive when we were small, we used to hold hands. When we were a little older, we lay on the same bed late at night and watched the Knicks on TV, disregarding our parents’ orders to go to sleep. Now we were in college, and we rarely touched.
    When dinner was over, my mother put sheets and towels in the guest bedroom, where Sandy would spend the night. That was the rule—girlfriends, and now boyfriends, stayed in separate bedrooms. My mother pretended this was my father’s policy, but it was really hers also. She had us believe that she was liberated, but she didn’t like to think about her sons having sex.
    Still, she left a condom on Jonathan’s nightstand.
    â€œMom,” I said, holding it up. “This is embarrassing.”
    â€œWhat is? He needs to protect himself.”
    I thought of saying something about the letter she’d sent me. But what? That it wasn’t her business? That she should leave Jonathan alone about AIDS, when I hadn’t?
    â€œWe all need to protect ourselves,” I said. “They sell condoms in New Haven.” I put the condom back on the nightstand. “Mom, you’re trying too hard.”
    She looked at me fiercely. “I’m being polite.”
    â€œJonathan