12. Sleepover at Eric Bobrow’s House

I was often the first friend of the new kid. I was always interested when someone new came into class, and it was like the new kids sensed this interest and sought me out. Sooner or later we would end up talking, and then occasionally hanging out together on the playground during recess. I had my own recess friends, of course, and they didn’t necessarily go out of their way to join me when I was with one of these new kids. But they didn’t give me a hard time about it, either, even if it meant I missed playing our usual games of Kill the Guy with the Ball or baseball with a ball made from lunch-sandwich tinfoil. (We used an open hand for the bat.) They’d just come to expect it of me.

Most of the time these new kids went on to find real friends after a few weeks or months, kids who were more like them, and I went back to my old friends. The one exception was Eric Bobrow, who came to our class near the end of the school year, in April. This in itself was highly unusual and piqued my curiosity: why would someone start a new school so close to the end of the year? What did he think he was going to learn in just six or seven weeks, the last few of which in June everyone knew were just waste time when the teachers did things like have us draw pictures illustrating scenes from our favorite songs, or, worse, showed the movie “The Red Balloon” for the hundredth time? What was so important that this kid’s parents couldn’t wait a few more weeks until they moved?

When I talked to Eric Bobrow, as I true-to-form ended up doing a few days after he arrived, he told me the answer. His father was a high school principal, and was going to be starting a new job in the fall. Not at Monroe-Woodbury, the high school for our town, but at another high school, not too far away. They wanted him to come early so he could spend some time with the principal who was leaving. Eric had begged his parents to let him stay back where they lived in Massachusetts and live with a friend’s family while he finished the school year, but his father said no. His father, Eric told me, said that whatever they did, they did it as a family.

I thought that was kind of cool. I also thought it was cool that Eric’s father was a high school principal. It was one of those jobs you never really thought about real people doing them.

Eric was a sort of nondescript kid, not athletic at all and not so great at school, either. I still ended up spending a lot of time with him at recess. He’d done a lot of traveling, and I thought that was unusual, to be only ten years old and have already been to London and Paris. I’d heard of these places, but I’d never known anyone who’d been to them, not even adults. Eric also knew a lot about the stars and planets, which interested me.

Mostly though what I liked about Eric Bobrow was he didn’t seem to care about anything. It didn’t bother him, being the new kid, it didn’t bother him that he didn’t have much to contribute during class and was totally useless at kickball. I couldn’t really get my mind around it. I cared so much.

My first sleepover was at Eric’s house. I arrived on a Friday just before dinner. My parents said their goodbyes, and I expected to go straight up to Eric’s room, check out his collection of monster magazines or Mads or whatever it was he collected. I just figured he collected something, like we all did.

Instead, his parents immediately made us all sit around the table. Eric had a brother, two years younger. He was there too. There were unlit candles on the table.
“This is called the Shabbat,” Eric’s mother said. “It’s a Jewish ceremony that we do on Friday nights. Jewish, that’s our religion.”

I knew this already. Eric had told me. It was no big deal.

“We’d like you to help light the candles,” Eric’s mother continued. “Would you like to do that?”

“Sure,” I said.

I was nervous. But Eric’s mother helped, struck the long match for me and held my hand steady as I touched the flare up to the candle wick.

I wasn’t crazy about the food, some kind of fish. I didn’t like fish much. But I forced myself to eat it, wanting to be a good guest, wanting to fit in. I did like the bread, which was shiny on the outside, and sweet. Challah, Eric’s mother called it.

Eric’s father was one of those adults who asked a lot of questions. I didn’t have much to say at first, but he kept after me: how did I like school? Which was my best subject? What did my father do for a living? What had my family done at this time last weekend?  I barely had time to chew my food for answering all the questions.

When Eric’s father got bored of asking me questions, he started with riddles and brain teasers. They were very hard, and I couldn’t get any of them, but I didn’t feel that bad because neither could Eric and his brother.

Eric’s mother cleared the table, and I thought I’d finally have a chance to go off alone with Eric but instead we had to sing songs. I wasn’t much for singing, but these Bobrows weren’t embarrassed at all about it, they just sang out around their kitchen table as though they were in the middle of a concert hall.

I would have figured they would sing Jewish songs, but it wasn’t anything like that. They sang songs like “You Are My Sunshine” and “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore.” I mostly just mouthed along and tried to smile. There was one song where you yelled “Noah, Noah” after every verse that I enjoyed.

“Okay,” Eric’s father said. “Game time!”

There was checkers, of course, and Chinese checkers, and they taught me a card game called Cribbage and a board game named Facts in Four. Everyone had to play every game against everyone else, we just took turns pairing off. I had always thought I was pretty good at games, and often won on the rare occasions we played games as a family at home, but against the Bobrows I was terrible. The only time I won was when I played against Eric’s little brother.

They didn’t have the TV on as we played, which would have been unheard of in my house. The silence made me uncomfortable. I told myself it was part of the reason I was doing so badly at the games. I couldn’t concentrate without the TV on.

We went up to bed way past my bedtime, at nearly eleven o’clock. I slept on the floor in the sleeping bag I’d brought, right next to Eric’s bed. I was so tired I fell right asleep without saying a word to Eric.

We had barely stumbled downstairs before Eric’s mother decided we should have a breakfast cookout. Eric’s father was already gone, she told us, he had some work to do at his new school. I was glad he wasn’t around, I was too tired to answer any more questions.

"How does that sound to you, Chris?” Eric’s mother asked. “Make a fire in backyard? Have a breakfast cookout?”

“Great,” I said.

It should have been fun, but it was just too strange. Going out on a Saturday morning, making a campfire in your backyard, it didn’t make any sense, it wasn’t what you were supposed to do. Why didn’t Eric’s parents seem able to leave us alone for five minutes? Did Eric really like this attentive a love? Would I, if I was their son?

Then, in the middle of the breakfast cookout, Eric’s mother finally did leave us alone. We had run out of eggs, and she went inside to get some more.

We were all silent, Eric and Eric’s brother and me. I couldn’t think of a thing to say to Eric, although he’d always been easy to talk with while we were at school.

There was a pail of water next to the fire. It had been one of the first things Eric’s mother did when we came outside, fill the pail from the garden hose. “Always best to be safe,” she said.

“You should pour that water on the fire,” I said to Eric’s brother.

“No, don’t,” Eric said. “I’m still hungry. I want to cook some more eggs.”

I ignored him. “Go ahead,” I said to Eric’s brother. “It’ll be fun. There will be sparks.”

So he did it. He did it because I asked him to.

Eric ran to the house, returning minutes later with mother. She looked angry. “Gregg, why did you put out the fire?”

Eric’s brother immediately began crying. “He told me to.” Gregg pointed to me.

“Did you tell him to put out the fire?” Eric’s mother demanded.

“I was just kidding,” I said. “I didn’t think he really would.”

I was lying. Eric’s mother looked like she knew I was lying.

She comforted Gregg. She told him that it wasn’t his fault, Chris had just been teasing, it was okay. She told Eric she would make him some toast inside. Every word made me feel uncomfortable, but it was an uncomfortable I knew, recognized. I’m sure my parents, when they came to pick me up an hour later, must have thought the reason I was so glad to see them was because I’d missed them.