Tanner’s Virgin

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At 2:30 one fine October afternoon I ripped the telephone out of the wall. Minna said, “Evan, you have ripped the telephone out of the wall.”

I looked at her. Minna is seven years old and looks like a Lithuanian edition of Alice in Wonderland, all blond and big-eyed, and it is generally a pleasure to look at her. Now, though, something in my glance told her that coexistence was temporarily impossible.

“I think I shall go to the park,” she said carefully. “With Mikey.”

“Mikey is in school.”

“He stayed home today, Evan. It is a Jewish holiday.”

Mikey, né Miguel, belonged to no church in particular and was thus free to become an ex-officio member of whatever religious group was staying home from school on any given day. I said something caustic about Mikey and the many paths to divine enlightenment. Minna asked if we had any stale bread, and I told her I couldn’t be expected to keep track of that sort of thing, that kitchen inventories were her problem. She reappeared with three slices of bread for the pigeons. They didn’t look especially stale.

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